Through the Wire

Democrats Reed Hundt and William Kennard — successive chiefs of the Federal Communications Commission under President Clinton — were early supporters of Sen. Barack Obama’s quest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination over Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Now, Hundt and Kennard are making public appearances in which they are openly attacking Obama’s presumptive Republican rival Sen. John McCain as a merger-lovin’ shill for telecom lobbyists who never passed an important piece of legislation while chairman of the Commerce Committee from 1997 to 2001.

Unfortunately, Hundt and Kennard seem to have lost touch with some of the facts.

Hundt got the not-so-straight-talk express rolling in a June 10 debate with former Republican FCC chairman Michael Powell, a McCain supporter. Hundt leaned in and demanded, “Can you name one merger, since 1996, that John McCain has opposed?” Hundt’s point: McCain has bearhugged every telecom deal because he won’t stand up to lobbyists who finance Senate Republicans’ campaigns.

McCain, the only Senate Republican to vote against the Telecommunications Act of 1996 because he thought it gave too much power to Hundt and Kennard, has, in fact, spoken out about consolidation among communications providers.

In April 1999, Reuters reported that McCain slammed AT&T’s $58 billion takeover of cable operator MediaOne Group.

“This is the obvious result of a [telecommunications] act that was designed to protect special interests and neglected the consumer,” McCain told the news service. “If you can’t compete, buy your opponents.”

Meanwhile, BusinessWeek reported Hundt hailed AT&T’s second big cable company purchase in less than a year.

“AT&T is putting its money where the government has asked the bets be placed,” Hundt told the magazine 17 months after leaving office.

Kennard’s case of amnesia on McCain’s record was just as bad.

“I’m hard-pressed to think of one significant legislative achievement in the [telecom] sector that was championed and was implemented by John McCain during his leadership on the Commerce Committee, because there isn’t,” Kennard said at a June 25 forum held by the Media Access Project.

Amazingly, Kennard overlooked McCain’s key role in passing the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999. That law allowed DirecTV and Dish Network to offer local TV signals in every market for the first time in history, igniting competition with cable.

When McCain’s bill became law, satellite TV had 8 million subscribers. Today, they serve 30 million.

The starring attraction of the 58-story Comcast Center in downtown Philadelphia is a trompe l’oeil drawing crowds of admirers in the City of Brotherly Love.

Consuming the width of the lobby is an 83-by-25-foot, 10-million-pixel high-definition video wall that displays a loop of different images and scenes.

At one point, people appear to be dancing on the wall just above the entryways to the elevator banks — the first time you see it, you do a double take. Another sequence shows dancers twirling on silver hoops hanging from the ceiling.

Other scenes include sharks and fish swimming in an azure sea; a Phillies slugger swinging at a fastball; cogs of a clock meshing together; and images of outer space.

The Wire (and other cable types) saw the display on the way to the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo chairman’s reception, held in the employee cafeteria (“Ralph’s Café”) on the 43rd and 44th floors. Dozens stood transfixed in the lobby, staring at the undulating images. The Wire visited the building again last week, and snapped the crowd photo shown here.

For a 9-minute, 41-second clip of the wall in action on YouTube, search “Comcast Center Opening.” Also visit Multichannel.com for more images of the wall.

Don S. Davis, the actor who played Gen. George Hammond on Showtime and Sci Fi Channel’s longtime hit Stargate SG-1, was recalled last week as warm-hearted and charming with the show’s fans — and a skilled actor whose character was a beloved father figure on the action series. He died Sunday, June 29, at his home in British Columbia after a heart attack at age 65.

Joseph Mallozzi, who worked as a writer and producer on SG-1 for nine years, said “Don ... had a bigger heart, was even nicer than the Hammond character that he played.”

Mallozzi, executive producer of spinoff Stargate Atlantis, said during a conference call discussing the show’s July 11 return said Davis was one of the first actors to warmly welcome him to the set for SG-1’s fourth season. Fans who approached him at conventions soon learned Davis was “a very warm-hearted, incredibly self-deprecating man,” a saddened Mallozzi said.

Davis’s last turn as Hammond was in MGM’s upcoming DVD release Stargate: Continuum. Charles Cohen, an MGM senior executive VP with a close interest in the show, said: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and colleague.”