A complicated series of broadcaster-cable rules flowed out of the FCC from the late s on to relieve some of the competitive pressure that cable was putting on public broadcasters. In the meantime, Congress passed no laws related to cable, and the Supreme Court issued a copyright decision that injured broadcaster interests and helped the growing cable operators. Nevertheless, in an effort to protect the broadcasters, the FCC created, in the words of a contemporary trade magazine, a "jerry-built substitute" copyright obligation called "retransmission permission" that still plagues television to this day in the form of complex content negotiations and high cable bills.
In , the FCC banned telephone companies from providing TV service, thus depriving Americans of a third television source. The stated fear was that the telephone companies, which were part of the Bell system and had government-granted local monopolies, would use their monopoly power and control of utility poles to harm independent cable operators.
Rather than "regulate down" and open up the market to all entrants, the FCC increased regulatory burdens to preserve its silo approach to regulation.
In , the FCC decided that licensing cable operators was too onerous, so it required state and local regulatory bodies to assign local monopolies to cable companies, called "franchises," and regulate the rates the franchises charged. The policy kludges have continued to mount in recent years. Satellite TV firms also face complex and unnecessary technical requirements.
And just this year, the FCC turned its attention to internet-delivered television and may soon craft regulations that will help preserve its s-era broadcast market allocations. The result is stifled competition and fewer choices for consumers. Regarding wireless regulation and spectrum policy, the FCC has been similarly suspicious toward new services, but an added wrinkle has been thrown in: the politicized allocation of lucrative spectrum licenses.
The FCC is subject to intense lobbying for the valuable spectrum licenses it assigns, resulting in "woeful inefficiencies and wasted resources," according to former FCC officials Gerald Faulhaber and David Farber. Because of the technical nature of spectrum debates, it is hard to calculate just how much waste has resulted, but conservative estimates of even routine delays in auctioning airwaves to their highest-valued use place consumer-welfare losses at tens of billions of dollars annually.
These distortions in the market take the form of higher smart-phone bills, fewer competitive choices for broadband and television, and more delayed wireless services.
Reforms enacted in the Telecommunications Act made marginal improvements in telephone markets, and spectrum auctions are getting wireless spectrum to market faster than they used to. Further, the policy kludges generated as the agency whipsaws between administrations and regulatory approaches create "homemade legislation" and norms known only to the FCC and a few select outsiders.
Entrepreneurs who try to cut through this thicket of unstable, unpredictable rules frequently draw industry and professional activist opposition, which is channeled through the agency.
Since the public interest cannot be measured, the FCC must measure its effectiveness according to the economic performance of the parties it regulates. Recent actions by the agency, particularly the nascent net-neutrality legal regime, indicate it is seeking substantial power over the internet and will become entangled in content-related issues. And this raises some critical First Amendment questions.
Because many communications companies are involved in both speech and the distribution of speech, supposedly content-neutral actions pose unique threats to their First Amendment rights, giving rise to what University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Yoo has dubbed "architectural censorship.
Structural regulation was used extensively against the Bell system to prevent it from getting involved in non-telephone services like data communications and television. In recent decades, the FCC has become even more aggressive with its structural regulations and has extracted concessions from companies relating to ancillary concerns like hiring decisions, employee wages, and compliance with net-neutrality norms.
The FCC and media-access groups have long favored structural rules, not because they encourage competition but because those non-economic remedies ostensibly increase the diversity of media viewpoints and local, educational, and public-affairs programming.
Many scholars wish to equip the FCC to handle even larger civic-minded aspirations in the Internet Age. Professor Tim Wu, for instance, who coined the phrase "net neutrality" and lobbied for the FCC's internet rules, argued in congressional testimony that the FCC should be charged with "protecting an open society," "safeguarding the political process," and prohibiting media companies from silencing political viewpoints.
What appear to be content-neutral economic regulations, however, have pernicious effects when applied to media distributors. Information policy scholar Christian Sandvig astutely notes that internet "distribution architecture remains an important site of investigation for the media scholar, as well as an avenue for intervention by the media activist" because "within the distribution infrastructure lies a clear picture of which speakers are valued and what content is important.
The distribution infrastructure is a crucial battleground: competing visions of society are made manifest within seemingly-technical struggles. The FCC can intentionally influence the speech of regulated entities because the jurisprudence on how the First Amendment protects electronic media is unsettled. It shouldn't be this way. It is our town square. It is our individual soapbox and our shared platform for opportunity.
Therefore, there is persistent political pressure to withhold free-speech rights from cable companies, internet providers, social networks, and search engines. Even most legal scholars are probably unaware that there is a fierce fight over how the First Amendment applies to new media.
In law reviews and conferences, scholars and regulators parry over whether electronic media should receive the substantial speech protections found in the "print media" or the relatively meager protections given TV and radio broadcasters, who are subject to indirect and direct government censorship.
As Sandvig says, "What is at stake is not some arcane technical principle of point-to-point routing vs. Regulating internet, cable, and wireless platforms affects speech rights just as regulating newspaper delivery or newspaper racks would affect speech rights. Traditional speech intermediaries like bookstores, the op-ed pages in a newspaper, and print publishers have secure First Amendment rights to offer only certain content and to aggregate and "curate" their offerings.
The Supreme Court has recognized in traditional print media that, because it is far easier for regulators to punish intermediaries transmitting speech than to punish speakers, vigilance against even facially unobjectionable regulation is required. As the Court said in the case City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Company , a case striking down a city's licensing of newspaper racks: "[A] law requiring the licensing of printers has historically been declared the archetypal censorship statute.
In sharp contrast, the FCC can license speakers who use the airwaves. After an era of regulation of monopolies and quasi monopolies, the FCC changed gears during the Reagan administration to become a conduit for deregulation of both common carriers and the broadcast media.
During the early years of the FCC, it largely limited its regulation of telephone services to profits. In time, however, the agency began to promote competition.
The courts ruled that there was no compelling public interest in a long-distance monopoly. Recent regulatory issues have centered on the entry of telephone companies into other communications services. In the FCC removed restrictions on their foray into computer communications, and the Telecommunications Act of allowed telephone companies to enter the cable communications market by relaxing cross-ownership limits.
Because communications frequencies are scarce and the airways are public by nature, the FCC has been given and has taken some broad powers in regulating the broadcast media. In its early years, the FCC enforced limits on ownership, chain broadcasting, and content regulation. Among other things, it ordered the breakup of the NBC Blue radio network because of excessive monopoly control.
In National Broadcasting Co. The regulation of ownership has, however, loosened in recent years, because the FCC, in a deregulatory mood, has allowed concentration of station ownership. The Telecommunications Act of raised the limits on station ownership and in several amendments since increased the limits and loosened the rules on media cross-ownership.
However, these developments have not been without controversy. Consumer and other interest groups have protested that the increasing corporate concentration of power violates the public interest and excludes minorities from ownership.
Some critics contend that the FCC has fallen short on content regulation. Driven by commercial interests, it often has failed adequately to insist on the presentation of diverse viewpoints.
By contrast, free-market champions often argue that FCC regulation stifles diversity by restricting competition. The fairness doctrine was challenged in in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. Federal Communications Commission , but it was upheld on the grounds of frequency scarcity. In its work facing economic opportunities and challenges associated with rapidly evolving advances in global communications, the agency capitalizes on its competencies in: Promoting competition, innovation and investment in broadband services and facilities Supporting the nation's economy by ensuring an appropriate competitive framework for the unfolding of the communications revolution Encouraging the highest and best use of spectrum domestically and internationally Revising media regulations so that new technologies flourish alongside diversity and localism Providing leadership in strengthening the defense of the nation's communications infrastructure Leadership The agency is directed by five commissioners who are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.
Organization The commission is organized into bureaus and offices , based on function see also Organizational Charts of the FCC. Bureau and office staff members regularly share expertise to cooperatively fulfill responsibilities such as: Developing and implementing regulatory programs Processing applications for licenses and other filings Encouraging the development of innovative services Conducting investigations and analyzing complaints Public safety and homeland security Consumer information and education Rules and Rulemakings The FCC's rules and regulations are in Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations CFR , which are published and maintained by the Government Printing Office.
Advisory Committees In Congress passed the Federal Advisory Committee Act to ensure that advice by advisory committees is objective and accessible to the public. List of all of FCC advisory committees, task forces, councils and other groups. They also may act between meetings by "circulation," a procedure by which a document is submitted to each commissioner individually for consideration and official action. The Commission staff is organized by function.
There are six operating Bureaus and 10 Staff Offices. The Bureaus' responsibilities include: processing applications for licenses and other filings; analyzing complaints; conducting investigations; developing and implementing regulatory programs; and taking part in hearings.
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