FCC Chair Michael Powell To Resign

from the and-so-it-goes... dept

Top FCC honcho Michael Powell has apparently decided to resign. This has been rumored on and off over the past couple of years, but he's denied it every time, insisting he wanted to stay through a second term. It will be interesting to see what people eventually consider his legacy to be. While some people are obviously going to be at either extreme, his scorecard at the end of the day probably comes out as very mixed. It was clear that he understood many of the issues facing the communications industries, but he failed to come up with a comprehensive policy, or to convince others for the need for some massive reforms. Instead, the reforms came out in an ad hoc way, that either didn't make much sense, or failed to fully realize what he was trying to achieve. So, while he gets points for actually understanding many of the issues (unfortunately, not all that common in DC), he failed to successfully do enough about those issues. Also, while he worked on many serious issues, he's forever going to be associated with his somewhat pointless focus on indecency regulations -- which is a very polarizing subject, and seems to get much more attention that his other efforts.

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