WBZ should hang it's head in shame

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Fri, 1 Jun 2012 02:08:06 -0400, "Don" <Donald_Astelle@yahoo.com> said:

> The biggest blow the "public interest" happenned after the Telcom Act, 
> which,  BTW...was passed under Bill Clinton(D) and our local Congressman 
> Markey(D) (Although there is/was plenty of blame to go around in both 
> parties.) 

Not really.  By the time of the Telecom Act, the FCC was already quite
hemmed in by both Congress and the courts such that, even if it wanted
to, it could not legally maintain the classic PICON regulatory
structure.  Comparative hearings, for example, were deemed
unconstitutional and abolished long before Congress decided that
spectrum should go to the highest bidder.  When I first started
following this stuff back in the mid-90s, there was a huge backlog of
pending applications at the FCC that couldn't be processed because
Congress hadn't approved a replacement for the comparative hearing
process.  They just sat there, for years, until all but one applicant
finally threw in the towel.

-GAWollman