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Populist outrage is threatening to undo a controversial effort by the FCC to loosen restraints on media megaliths. In the Senate last week, seven Republicans joined 28 Democrats to schedule a rare "resolution of disapproval" to overturn new FCC rules that would let companies like News Corp. and Viacom expand their media holdings in local markets. Then in the House, defecting Republicans fueled a 40-to-25 committee vote to reverse part of the FCC's action...
...appears that the chief architect of those rules, FCC chairman Michael Powell, may not stick around for the fight. According to industry sources, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell has told confidants he'd like to leave by fall, and three of his four top staff members are putting out job feelers. (Powell has denied he's leaving soon.) His most likely replacement, sources say, is either Rebecca Klein, who is head of the Texas public-utility commission and was on the staff of Governor George W. Bush, or FCC commissioner Kevin Martin, who helped the Bush team...
...President Bush signed in March allots $16 million to set up a national do-not-call list. The law also instructs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt similar rules and make industries that the FCC regulates--banking, telecommunications and media--subscribe to the national list. The new federal rules, which took effect March 31, require telemarketers to display their phone numbers on caller-ID devices beginning early next year and also combat dead-air calls from autodialers...
...than a short-range transmitter-receiver. (Here's a piece of trivia for your next cocktail party: the patent on which Wi-Fi technology is based was filed back in 1942 by actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil.) Wi-Fi uses a frequency long set aside by the FCC for quirky radio devices--the downside being that microwave ovens and some brands of cordless phone can play havoc with the signal...
Less sinister than such threats, but more persistent and pervasive, is the danger of cultural homogenization of content brought about by the loss of local control. Experience with limited deregulation in radio ownership should serve as a warning to the FCC not to deregulate other media. Since ownership restrictions in radio were relaxed in 1996, several large national corporations have snapped up local radio stations in droves. Clear Channel Communications, for example, now owns over 1,200 local radio stations across the nation...