Michael K. Powell, 41, will step down in March as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission after almost four years as the government's top media and telecommunications regulator, he announced today.
Poor Michael Powell, the son of Colin Powell, was in over his head as major domo of the FCC. If he had stuck to the "geek gadget" stuff, like VoIP and broadband Internet access, both of which he understood and championed, he would have done fine. But the expansion of corporate media ownership, which he was exactly and naively on the wrong side of, and a confused and arbitrary approach to broadcast rule implementation left him the most reviled chairman in FCC history.
Frank Ahrens talks about his tenure:
- Powell was appointed to the FCC by President Clinton in 1997. After George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, Powell was elevated to chairmanship of the commission, which oversees land-based and wireless telecommunication, satellite services and media ownership and patrols the nation's airwaves for indecency.
It was these past two areas that proved toughest for Powell, a former Army officer who left the service after suffering a near-fatal injury in a 1987 training exercise in West Germany that left him bedridden for a year.
In June 2003, Powell and the two other Republicans on the FCC pushed through new media ownership rules that would have allowed the television networks to own a few more stations, tightened national radio ownership rules and let one company own the biggest newspaper and television station in almost every city.
....More fines for indecency were proposed under Powell than by all previous chairman combined. In 2004 alone, the FCC proposed nearly $8 million in indecency fines.
A self-admitted gadget geek, Powell pushed for the rapid rollout of cell phone and wireless communications networks, calling them tools of democracy. Ironically, it was grass roots e-mail campaigns during the media ownership controversy that poured the most heat on Powell. [Washington Post]
We have been following Powell's tenure rather closely since Blogcritics' inception in August of '02 - here are some of the key stories:
Dumpster Bust Keeping It Real Politik: Hey FCC, Who’s Really Complaining?
There’s a lot of Values Talk in America right now. From Janet Jackson’s nipple accoutrements to gay marriage to John Kerry’s decision to put on cammo pants and walk in a field, Values Talk has dominated much of the political...
Posted in Blogcritics Archives on December 31, 2004 05:05 AM
Radio Free Satellite
Despite the clear legal grounds the religious right wanted to extend government reach further into private business.
Posted in Blogcritics Archives on December 28, 2004 09:49 AM
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Like father, like son? Leaving, I mean
2 - Eric Olsen
indeed - maybe they'll start a lobbying firm - that sucker would have some clout!
3 - Temple A. Stark
Michael Powell - what a tit.
:) sorry,couldn't resist. He hasn't been very effective - unless you count raking in the big bucks for the government, effective.
4 - spiderleaf
I had the same reaction to this news as I did to Ashcroft leaving...
good, there can't possibly be anyone worse... can there?
Enter Gonzales...
5 - Eric Olsen
as I said, he was okay with the tech geek side of things but way over his head with the political side of things
6 - spiderleaf
olay?
I had no idea tech geeks preferred one type of skincare product over another...
[smile]
7 - Eric Berlin
Howard Stern sums up the situation quite well with:
Thank God he's Gone
But then...
8 - Dave Nalle
Wow, I didn't realize this self-righteous idiot was a Clinton appointee. Everyone keeps blaming him on Bush.
Dave
9 - Paul Roy
Let's not forget that the next guy is going to be appointed by Bush. Do you think he/she will be any less of an indecency-freak than Powell was. This is a great chance for Bush to "clean-up" these vile airwaves really good. This is an Evangelical Christian we are dealing with here.
No good parent wants their young child listening to Stern, or seeing Janet's tit during the superbowl, but the lack of good parents is the big problem, not the lack of FCC enforcement. Oh and if you're an adult, change the frigging channel if you don't like what you see or hear. Radio is already a dying medium, due to overregulation, and monopoly ownership. I haven't listened to music on the radio in about ten years, because it is the same ten songs over and over and over.
I only fear that this great Internet will be next on the FCC hit list. Self regulation can work really well--just look at Blogcritics.
10 - Eric Berlin
Paul - Great summation of the situation as it now stands.
I almost fear Sen. Brownback of Kansas more than Bush or the FCC Chair. He was a major figure in pushing through the outlandish Stern fines, and I'm sure he's now steamed about the recent ruling that satellite subscription-based radio will remain unregulated.
Who knows what his next move will be?
Oh, that's right: President of the United States. He's said to be considering a run as a true religious/cultural conservative.
11 - Eric Olsen
all makes good sense except I don't agree overregulation has been a problem for radio: it's been the extremely arbitrary and uneven enforcement of what i think are reasonable indecency rules that has caused the problems. The rules were there but basically not enforced so everyone ignored them, then were outraged when they started to be enforced after the Super Bowl hoohaw. Enforce the rules evenly and everyone will know where they stand.
And it was Deregulation that allowed for the consolidation, which I agree has been the death of interesting commercial radio
12 - Eric Berlin
At the risk of blowing in the wind, I change my position by agreeing with Eric regarding under- and not overregulation.
However, regarding decency standards: I think they're falling into the same silly category that network television is currently contending with versus cable. Decency standards in terms of language and even sexual content are largely anachronistic compared with how people think, speak, and interact in "real life." If content should be regulated (or further enforced) it should be more along the lines of violence, which has been shown to be harmful, especially for children.
13 - Eric Olsen
you can get away with almost anything after 10pm, which I think is a reasonable barrier. Again, I think the real problem right now is no one knows exactly how the rules are going to be enforced after they were essentially ignored. I would argue that the anything goes of cable, satellite and the Internet make it MORE important to have a place people can go where there are parameters
14 - Eric Berlin
I'm fine with reasonable barriers, though I think American values are a little bit strange when compared to Europe, which is much less uptight about language and sexual content yet more concerned about violence.
15 - Eric Olsen
i agree our standards for violence do not parallel those for sex and language - why do you think that's so?
16 - Temple Stark
See some of the bloodthirsty around the blogosphere.
17 - Eric Berlin
It's an interesting question that has something to do with the uniqueness of American culture (which, unforunately, many Americans assume to be the only culture).
At the risk of starting off a firestorm, Michael Moore touches on this theme well if at times unevenly in Bowling for Columbine. There's something about America that is obsessed with violence, from the Old West through the modern gangster flick and sensationalist media.
At the same time, there's a repressive instinct to censor sex-related and human body-related content, which may stem from the culture instilled into the original colonies by Calvinists and Puritans.
18 - Paul Roy
Its funny, we are totally ass-backwards from most of the rest of the world when it comes to what is censored on TV. When I lived in Spain (ex-military), they showed hard-core porn on regular tv after midnight. Japan was very strange. All kinds of soft-core porn cartoon magazines and sexualized tv shows for all, and an obsession with hard core porn for adults. Their porn is very masochistic and violent too--very weird. But I digress. In the US, we cannot show a woman's breast, even tastefully, even after midnight, but show all the guys getting shot in the head, or having their arms ripped off by some kind of monster that your heart desires. The funny thing is, I'm not sure who has it right??