SENATE PANEL CONTINUES FCC REVIEW OF BROADCAST CODE OF CONDUCT
FCC would have to continue to work with Senate Appropriations Committee on possible “resurrection” of broadcast industry code of conduct, measure tied to appropriations bill that panel referred to Senate floor Thurs. Budget bill was marked up by committee Thurs. and cleared for action by full Senate. Committee report said members were “concerned about the declining standards of broadcast television and the impact this decline is having on America’s children.” Committee made recommendation while reminding FCC of agency’s Dec. 1999 Notice of Inquiry “regarding the public interest obligations of broadcasters during and after the transition to [DTV].”
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Committee recommended $252.5 million appropriation for FCC for fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2002, up $4 million from agency’s request. Nearly $219 million would be derived through existing regulatory fees. Committee proposed that $4 million be assigned to FCC’s Excellence in Engineering program that seeks to make Commission’s engineering staff “more fluent in technology than the entities it regulates.”
Over next 5 years, competition and innovation will greatly reduce “need for direct regulation,” thereby increasing FCC’s need to “maintain an independent technical engineering and economic expertise,” report said: “The advent of Internet-based and other technology-driven communication services will continue to erode the traditional regulatory distinctions between different sectors of the communications industry.”
Dept. of Justice’s Antitrust Div. would get $10.2 million less than requested, for $130.8 million total. However, committee devoted additional $3.6 million of that amount over FY 2001 specifically for timely review of mergers: “The committee is concerned that the merger frenzy gripping increasingly massive industrial combines threatens to overwhelm the ability of the Antitrust Division to keep pace with complex merger proposals… [R]ecent market conditions will likely spark an increase in merger activity. The collapse of high-technology stocks, and the recent downward pressure on all stock prices, has created ‘fire sale’ opportunities for cash-rich corporations to acquire undervalued companies.”
Committee recommended $204 million for Justice’s Wireless Management Office (WMO), $100 million over request. WMO has oversight of department’s land mobile radio system transition to digital narrowband technology, which committee said was troubled by delays due to differences in intra-agency component requirements: “The WMO is directed to submit a program plan based on the final list of program requirements and a breakout, by fiscal year and activity, of the total program cost based on the program plan not later than December 21, 2001. None of the funds provided for narrowband communications for FY 2002 may be made available until the Committee on Appropriations has approved this program plan.”