New Era at the FCC

Charles Babington, Washington Post - April 4, 2007

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) scolded the five members of the Federal Communications Commission when he finally got them before a powerful subcommittee last month.

The FCC botched handling of cable television franchising, racked up a backlog of unanswered consumer complaints, and dallied on various disputes between industry rivals with little oversight from the previous Republican-controlled Congress in recent years, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said in the March 14 hearing.

Within days, word spread that the FCC was accelerating efforts to complete action on about 150 pending matters -- from regulating cable television service in apartment buildings to settling quarrels over the distribution of telecommunications funds in rural areas. Some analysts saw the move as a direct response to lawmakers' complaints.

With Democrats running Congress, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin is "responding to the sense that Dingell doesn't like backlogs," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the nonprofit Media Access Project. "He doesn't want to be on the wrong side of Dingell."

Dingell's blast was part of the heightened scrutiny and criticism Congress has heaped on the FCC in the past three months, pressure that could help shape regulatory policies this year in the rapidly changing landscape of media and telecommunications. Controlling Congress for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats are pushing, prodding and sometimes skewering the commission on subjects they think have been sidetracked or mismanaged for years, including media-ownership rules and mega-mergers like the one between AT&T and BellSouth last year.

See an overview of Energy Committee action on Telecommunications >>