Kennard, the Public & the FCC

William Kennard, until January the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, says that for most members of Congress, the FCC is seen as "this little honey pot" whose decisions they can influence to the benefit of their corporate friends. "The power to grant or deny licenses is the power to make people incredibly wealthy very quickly," says Kennard, who served three years as FCC chairman after three years as the commission's general counsel. He says he came to the job "feeling very strongly that the agency had become the captive of corporate interests and was really not connecting to its core mission" of protecting the public interest in communications. He soon learned firsthand that this might have been an optimistic appraisal.

Kennard's inability to advance even a very modest public service agenda is a good indication of the corruption of communications policy-making today. And indications are that matters will only get worse under the Bush Administration. Bush's choice to replace Kennard, Michael Powell, is an enthusiastic advocate of assisting the largest communications firms to get bigger without any strings attached. When Bush completes his overhaul of the five-person FCC (he's just nominated three new members), expect the commission to resume its traditional role of being, along with the Pentagon, Washington's largest corporate welfare office.

On April 19 the FCC relaxed its restriction against one company owning multiple television networks, meaning that Viacom, which bought CBS last year, can hold on to the UPN network. In the near term, expect to see the FCC remove the prohibition on firms owning TV stations and daily newspapers in the same community. Look also for the FCC to increase the percentage of the nation's markets in which a firm can own TV stations, currently 35 percent, or perhaps to remove all limits, as was done with radio in 1996. Down the road, virtually all the restrictions on cross-ownership among cable companies, TV stations, TV networks and other media and communications firms will be relaxed, if not eliminated. By all accounts, this will lead to a massive wave of mergers and ever more consolidation of media ownership.

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