FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday outlined the FCC's preliminary plan for a retrospective regulatory review that it agreed to come up with at the request of the White House.
That included the news that the FCC's quadrennial media ownership review would not be wrapped up until next year. That announcement came during a speech to Georgetown's McDonough School of Business Monday, an FCC spokesperson confirmed.
The media ownership review had been delayed while a federal court was mulling challenges to the FCC's last attempt to change the rules back in 2007 -- then-FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's loosening of the newspaper–broadcast crossonwership ban. The court wound up throwing out that decision in July because it failed to meet proper notice and comment requirments for the change and remanded it back to the commission. The court upheld Martin's decision not to lossen any other ownership rules.
For the most part, the preliminary plan Genachowski outlined and which was posted on the FCC's Web site Monday lists the 190 regulations the FCC says it has eliminated since 2009, when the new chairman came aboard and outlines the regs it has been reviewing as part of ongoing inquiries and rulemakings, for example the National Broadband Plan, Universal Service Fund reform, retransmission consent, and enhanced disclosure.
The FCC's plan makes the point that the commission has already been doing retrospective, cost-benefit analysis of its regulations, and that when it comes up with a final outline for that ongoing process per the President's executive order, it will put it out for public comment.
