Party Time

I have been told by somebody who was there that D.C.'s "most remarkable" holiday party of the season was not NBC's fancy feast or even TNT's Christmas in Washington gala, whose fairlyland setting seemed plucked from the first act of The Nutcracker.

It was apparently Thursday night at the Army-Navy Club in Arlington, Va., where a dinner party was hosted by WW II vet and former FCC Chairman Jim Quello.

Quello, at 92, is still a force to be reckoned with and is already planning his hundredth birthday party.

The guest list–there were about 50–included a voting majority–though an unlikely one–of the FCC with Deborah Taylor Tate, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps in attendance, as well as former Chairman and current legal star Dick Wiley, and former commissioners Kathleen Abernathy and Henry Rivera, the latter, I believe, fresh off a gig moderating a media ownership hearing in Nashville.

Then there was the unusual dual sighting of the former and present NAB chiefs Eddie Fritts and David Rehr.

Said B&C's fly on the wall: "Quello was the consummate host - busily placing gifts and tree ornaments at each guest's table setting?"

By John Eggerton