Powell to Resign from the FCC

[Gemini Cricket]

FCC Chairman Powell Set to Resign (http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/21/news/newsmakers/powell_resigning/index.htm?cnn=yes)
A senior government official says Powell, a member of the FCC since November 1998 and the chairman since early 2001, will announce his resignation later Friday. His term on the commission runs through 2007.
:) :cheers:

[Ghoulish Delight]

Best news I've heard in a while.

[Scrooge McSam]

I'll reserve any cheering and dancing until I hear of Mr. Bush's choice of replacement.

[Uncle Dick]

I don't know what difference this makes. As long as the FCC exists, it's going to encroach on our lives. I'll start the party once someone decides to completely eliminate this particular morsel of government excess.

[Ghoulish Delight]

The FCC is one agency where who's at the helm makes a large difference. It's run with little to no oversight, so whoever's in charge has a LOT of leeway. Powell was using that leeway to its fullest.

[Gemini Cricket]

I'll reserve any cheering and dancing until I hear of Mr. Bush's choice of replacement.
True. I'm hoping it's not going to be Ashcroft or someone like that. He could do that, could he?
I don't know what difference this makes. As long as the FCC exists, it's going to encroach on our lives. I'll start the party once someone decides to completely eliminate this particular morsel of government excess.
I agree totally. Can we say 'censorship'? In fact, I heard Powell called GD to complain about your username. :D
The FCC is one agency where who's at the helm makes a large difference. It's run with little to no oversight, so whoever's in charge has a LOT of leeway. Powell was using that leeway to its fullest.
So true. How can there be no checks and balances with this group? I don't understand.

[Scrooge McSam]

In fact, I heard Powell called GD to complain about your username. :D

So I'm not the only one that thinks of the SouthPark movie when I see that username. :D

[Uncle Dick]

The FCC is one agency where who's at the helm makes a large difference. It's run with little to no oversight, so whoever's in charge has a LOT of leeway.
Which is precisely why it should not exist in the first place. No single person needs that much power over our lives.

Powell gets props from me for at least attempting a bit of deregulation in the face of First Amendment-skirting media ownership rules.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

What Dick said! The FCC is a travesty and should not exist.

[Scrooge McSam]

So any corporation should be able to control as much of the broadcast airwaves as they can buy?

I, of course, disagree.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Yeah, I'm with Scrooge. Anti trust laws preserver free speech by ensuring fair access for everyone. The logical end result of a completely free market is monopoly, which is the antithesis of freedom. Checks and balances are necessary.

[NirvanaMan]

He accomplished some good things (do-not call, keep your cell phone digits) but overall I did not like the guy and am glad that he is gone. That is of course unless they put in someone who even more generously gives away our 1st ammendment rights.

Damn the man. He's always trying to keep me down.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Not soon enough.

[Uncle Dick]

Anti trust laws preserver free speech by ensuring fair access for everyone. The logical end result of a completely free market is monopoly, which is the antithesis of freedom. Checks and balances are necessary.
Monopolies, with the exception of the Federal Government monopoly, prosper only at the whim of the consumer who chooses to support them. If a media company manages to complete dominate the airwaves, it does so only because people want its product and don't care about alternatives. What's fair about crippling companies that produce things people actually want to see?

Typically, the "barriers to entry" arguments that the government uses to excuse its trust-busting activities are a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by excessive regulations, fees, fines and other assorted goodies from our friends in D.C. that make it difficult for upstarts to gain fair access to the market. On the free market, no monopoly can gain and maintain its strength over its competitors without constantly adapting to the needs of the consumer. Yay capitalism.

[Scrooge McSam]

Sorry Can't engage you on this one.

You're throwing around the word monopoly and then arguing "no monopoly can gain and maintain its strength over its competitors".

An entity holding a monopoly has no competitors.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Even with the heavy regulations currently in place, the media landscape right now is a scary one. The number of voices with access to a national stage is rapidly shrinking. It's an environment where yellow journalism is the norm, and it's been getting steadily worse since media ownership restrictions were loosened. An viable independant station is an impossibility in this environment. Indie 103.1 is ownde by ClearChannel, for crying out loud.

Competition is the key to a healthy marketplace. The current trend of conglomeration is leading to lower quality, less variety, and less choice. A single media voice, or even only 3 or 4 voices to choose from is not freedom.

In my eye, the implication of freedom of press is not to open up the stage and allow whoever can shout the loudest and snuff out more competitors than anyone else own the stage. It's imperative that the stage is preserved for fair access for everyone.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Say Frito-Lay saw my product as a threat somehow. Frito-Lay buys my company (of course I'm not obliged to sell, but let's pretend they backed a dumptruck full of money to my door) and as part of the deal I sign a non-compete agreement. Frito-lay then stops making my product because it isn't profitable enough for them. Now my product is no longer available to the public. Where was the consumer ever given an option in the matter? The product was profitable to me, because I'm a small company. I don't need a lot of customers to be profitable. The product wasn't profitable to Frito-Lay because 5 or 10.000 customers is nothing to a huge multinational conglomerate.
We've seen it happen in our own Disney theme parks. An attraction that's not as popular as another is shuttered or altered, disappointing 10s of thousands of guests. A smaller company appreciates these numbers, a larger company does not.
How does a small specialty store stay in business on Elm Street when a Wal-Mart opens on the outskirts of town? They usually don't. Not because they don't carry quality products, but because the leviathan offers substitutes manufactured at a cut rate.
Monopolies don't enhance communities.
As we've seen in this little experiment, specialized communities have a lot (ahem, I mean a "LoT") to offer to specialized voices. Larger communities become a bit more homogenized, until they get so large that they might as well be served in a frosty cold glass next to a stack of pancakes.