The Next Bad News Bearers?

They say bad news comes in three's.  Major transportation disasters, passing of famous figures, Lindsay's court hearings.

So what next for the FCC?  The communications commissioners must be crouching behind their desks.

It was only this April, when the Washington DC Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's power to tell cable giant Comcast what to do.  Specifically, the Court found no authority under the Communications Act of 1934 for the Federal Communications Commission to try and enforce it's network neutrality principles upon the giant cable common carrier.

Simply put, on that one the FCC failed to tie its assertion of authority to any actual law enacted by Congress.  Observers called it a major blow to the Obama administration's emerging National Broadband Plan.

And now comes Wednesday's three judge ruling from the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down the FCC's current near-zero tolerance for accidental expletives during live events broadcast by the TV networks.  Calling the policy on fleeting expletives "unconstitutionally vague" the ruling did let stand a 1978 Supreme Court decision affirming the FCC's right to generally police the airwaves.

Simply put, with this one the FCC failed to tie it's assertion of authority over content to any actual law enacted by Congress.  Judge Rosemary Pooler wrote in the 3-0 decision, "Indeed, there is ample evidence in the record that the FCC's indecency policy has chilled protected speech."  The website Fast Company first published the following graphic:

Not a good call for the commission charged with policing our airwaves.  What next?  Well, today -- Thursday July 15 -- the FCC Dashboard meeting agenda includes Expanding Investment in Broadband Health Care Technology; Electronic Access to Cellphone Rate Information; an Inventory of Commercial Spectrum Space; and yes … Comcast's proposed takeover of NBC-Universal.

With the FCC having just recently lost in the courts to the same cable giant, if it's really true that bad news comes in three's, watching the government's behavior from this point forward will be, as Arte Johnson used to say, "ver-rrry interesting."


Jim Furrer