Federal Communications Commission. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), created by the Federal Communications Act of 1934, assumed all federal oversight of broadcasting,
telephone, and
telegraph services. Under the initial terms of the act, the president appointed seven commissioners to seven‐year terms; in 1982, Congress reduced the number of commissioners to five, serving five‐year terms.
Congress gave the FCC limited powers and scant funding; the first commissioners were obscure
radio engineers and attorneys with no incentive to alter the status quo. Like the Federal Radio Commission, which regulated broadcasting from 1927 to 1934, the FCC awarded radio licenses in ways that favored commercial over noncommercial broadcasters and punished only the most irresponsible behavior. The lethargy ended with the chairmanship of James Lawrence Fly (1939–1944). Under Fly, the commission forced the National Broadcasting Company to sell one of its two networks. Fly's successor, Paul O. Porter, fought to make stations honor their obligations to provide public‐service programming.
The Fly‐Porter years proved exceptional. In the 1950s, the agency bungled its greatest postwar challenge:
television. The FCC awarded TV licenses without consistent criteria except to reaffirm the dominance of two networks, NBC and CBS, at the expense of commercial and noncommercial rivals. In the 1960s, the commission adopted rules inhibiting the diffusion of cable TV systems, fearing they would undermine individual stations in smaller markets. For decades, FCC regulations similarly reinforced American Telephone and Telegraph's (AT&T) monopolistic control over the telephone industry, inhibiting competition and innovation. A 1982 district court ruling broke up AT&T.
Several key court decisions in the 1970s freed the cable industry. By then, the FCC itself had started to deregulate broadcasting. Yet the agency remained vigilant about what it considered indecent speech; individual commissioners, led by Chairman Reed Hundt (1993–1997), admonished the networks to air more educational children's programming.
Opening the door to further consolidation in an industry already dominated by corporate giants, the FCC in 2003 proposed new rules permitting one company to own several media outlets in a given market, and to control TV stations reaching up to 45 percent of the U.S. population. When smaller companies protested, Congress delayed implementation of the new policy pending further study. Responding to public complaints, the FCC in 2004 proposed sharply increased fines, to a maximum of $500,000, for TV or radio programming deemed indecent or obscene.
See also
New Deal Era, The;
Public Broadcasting.
Bibliography
Erwin G. Krasnow,, Lawrence D. Longley,, and and Herbert A. Terry , The Politics of Broadcast Regulation, 3d. ed., 1983.
James L. Baughman
; Updated by
Paul S. Boyer
