FCC Needs Major Overhaul, Says McSlarrow
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/15/2007 12:19:00 PM
A day after FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told a powerful congressman that cable should be included in any discussions about possibly regulating marketing to kids --specifically related to junk food marketing to kids--National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Kyle McSlarrow had some advice for Congress about "deregulating" the commission.
In a speech to the Media Institute in Washington, McSlarrow suggested that Congress should institute some systemic reforms at the FCC, saying the FCC had gotten caught up in an "elaborate Web of rules," and adding that, at the current FCC, "the trivial metastasizes into the burdensome."
Was he saying the FCC is like a cancer that needed to be eradicated. No, said McSlarrow, but in terms of competition regulation, he favors an approach put forth by the Progress & Freedom Foundation in its proposal for rewriting the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
That approach would turn the FCC into a more reactive agency, empowered to intervene "only if it determines that marketplace competition would not adequately protect consumers."
Essentially, he said, the presumption would be against regulation, and the agency retooled more like an FTC or Justice Department, responding to abuses through adjudication.
Pointing to former FCC Chairman Bill Kennard's 1999 observation that the FCC must change from an "industry regulator to a market facilitator," McSlarrow said not much had actually changed.
"Instead, we see and agency whose budget keeps increasing....primarily paid for by fees on the industries it regulates even as markets in its jurisdiction become more competitive."
An omnibus telecommunications bill rewrite failed to make it through the last Congress after it was pared down in an effort to get a bill that would actually pass, then brought down entirely by the network neutraily issue. So, McSlarrow was offering his suggestions for taking a new crack at telecommunications reform, which is to promote competition on a level playing field among companies free to invest and reap the rewards and free from FCC overregulation or inequitable regulation.
When asked whether he believed Martin's pledge at the NCTA convention opening session to give cable's issues a fair hearing, McSlarrow said he took the chairman at his word, and would "take him up on that."
McSlarrow gets the award for best speech amendment. As written, the speech contained the familiar line: "This is not your father's cable industry." As delivered, it included the addition: "unless, of course, you're Brian Roberts."
