Transformative Choices: A Review of 70 Years of FCC Decisions
Sherille Ismail, OSP, October 2010
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today released the first two of its new FCC Staff Working Papers. This agency-wide research paper series replaces all of the earlier working paper series that had been issued by individual bureaus and offices. It is intended to encourage staff research that furthers the “expert” function of the agency and builds agency intellectual capital. This active research program is managed by the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis (OSP).
The first paper in this series is “Transformative Choices: A Review of 70 Years of FCC Decisions” by Sherille Ismail, a Senior Attorney in OSP. The paper presents a historical review of a series of pivotal FCC decisions that helped shape today’s communications landscape. It finds that there have been a number of successful efforts by the FCC, before and after the 1970s, to promote new entrants, especially in the markets for commercial radio, cable television, telephone equipment, and direct broadcast satellites.
The full text of both working papers is available at http://www.fcc.gov/papers/. The OSP contact is Chuck Needy, who can be reached at chuck.needy@fcc.gov.
