FCC Needs a Paper Diet

Federal Communications Commission Kevin Martin and fellow Republican FCC member Deborah Taylor Tate have made quite clear their deep concern about overweight American kids.

But the FCC itself should consider going on a diet. A paper diet, that is.

On Friday, the agency released its rules governing the $10 billion sale of old analog TV spectrum to begin sometime before next Jan. 28. The load came in at a staggering 352-pages and 1,204 footnotes. That’s shockingly obese from a Republican-controlled agency ostensibly committed to seeing market forces prevail over bureaucratic preferences.

Amazingly, Friday’s document output could have been worse. After all, the 700 MHz auction rules ultimately adopted represented Martin’s attempt to give Google less than half of the interventionist bidding conditions sought by the Silicon Valley-based Internet search provider.
Now, before you big-government-loving Democrats begin to nod that one FCC is no different from the rest, try to recall the adipose dimensions of the 1996 local phone competition rules created by  Democratic FCC chairman Reed Hundt. Those came in at a back-breaking 737-pages, swelled with 3,276 footnotes, and triggered a tsunami of litigation that lasted eight years.