Obama fills FCC seats
President Barack Obama announced Thursday that he plans to nominate Meredith Attwell Baker, a former Commerce Department official, to fill the open Republican slot on the Federal Communications Commission.
Meredith Attwell Baker has been nominated by President Obama to fill one of two Republican seats on the five-member FCC.
Most recently Baker led the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA. This is the agency within the Commerce Department that was responsible for distributing the $40 coupons to consumers to convert their older analog TVs to receive digital TV signals. Baker came under fire earlier this year when the Commerce Department ran out of money for the coupons and millions of people were put on a waiting list.
Worries over the coupon program and a general feeling that too many people were unprepared for the switch to digital TV prompted Congress to push back the deadline to switch all the nation's high powered TV broadcasters from analog to digital from February to June.
With Baker's nomination to the FCC, President Obama has named his final nominee for the five member commission. Obama has already nominated Julius Genachowski to be FCC chairman. And he has also nominated Mignon Clyburn to fill a Democratic slot at the FCC. Clyburn is a member of South Carolina's public service commission. Commissioner Robert McDowell, who is a Republican, has been nominated for a second term on the commission.
For much of this year, the FCC has been operating with just three commissioners. Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, is serving as acting chairman. After Genachowski is sworn in as chairman, Copps will step down from that position, but remain on the commission for at least another year. His term ends June 30, 2010. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat, plans to leave the commission after the new chairman takes his position. Adelstein has been nominated to head the Internet grant program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Genachowski and McDowell have already been approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and are awaiting full Senate confirmation. It's expected that Baker and Clyburn will go through the Senate approval process together.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
This year the battle is going to be regulation of the media market. Unfortunately it'll be a battle fought along party lines... the three Democrats will seek new legislation to prevent media consolidation, while Baker and McDowell will favor a "hands-off"policy and let the market prevail.
It's not the consolidation thing that'll be the focus--it's "Fairness" Doctrine, content restrictions in the name of "localism", and those shorter license renewal requirements to let Fedzilla favor what it likes and punish what it doesn't.
Under the Bush administration, with media consolidation taking place, many Democrats favored legislating "fairness doctrine" in an attempt to counter the effects of consolidation. But now if the Democrats can prevent consolidation from happening in the first place, that's where the battle will be ultimately fought.
That's because the first thing that will happen if the Commission re-institutes the "fairness doctrine" will be the numerous First Amendment lawsuits which follow. Any new doctrine will not stand UNLESS the it is severely limited in scope (per Supreme Court decision, e.g., only to remote areas with difficult access to information -- not many places in today's internet-connected world.)
Not to say it wont happen, but any "fairness doctrine" movement will get bogged down in courts for years.
The anti-consolidation route, though, is much more straightforward, can be easily "sold" to the ignorant public, and achieves much of the same goals.
I forgot to submit my resume for that position.
- by midnightride June 26, 2009 10:33 AM PDT
- Phonebook read INDEED!! Come on Maggie, where IS the beef? I believe that the consolidation problem is, next to removing all technology from the voting process (no I am not a Luddite, I won an iPhone 16gig), the most important issue on the table today. With such tight corporate control of information, WE THE PEOPLE are rendered deaf to all but Budweiser/sports, pharmaceuticals, celebrity worship and various prurient, blood pays minutia. Folks, please remember that an educated populace is the ONLY antidote to that previously mentioned dumbing down. Power has been consolidated into far too few hands, and the American populace is not being duly informed, but instead led to believe that OUR VOTE COUNTS!
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