New FCC appointee favors soft regulatory approach

Robert McDowell, the newest member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, said he favors a light touch at the agency, which oversees the nation's telecommunications and media industries.

Most industry conflicts can be resolved by market forces, new technologies and innovation, McDowell told reporters in Washington last week at his first news conference since joining the five-member FCC about two months ago. The Senate appointment of McDowell fills the seat vacated by GOP Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy last year. The term runs until June 2009.

McDowell, 43, also signaled that he won't necessarily follow the wishes of FCC Chairman and fellow Republican Kevin Martin. That may make it harder for Martin to push through initiatives such as forcing cable companies to offer television channels separately. The FCC now has three Republican commissioners and two Democrats.

"I trust free markets and free people to make their own decisions," McDowell said.

McDowell distanced himself from Martin's efforts to force cable companies to offer their subscribers a wider range of programming packages. Martin has said that à la carte-style programming choices would allow consumers to save money and to avoid programming that they find objectionable.

In response to pressure from Martin and members of Congress, Philadelphia-based Comcast and New York-based Time Warner, the largest cable operators, created a new programming service limited to family-friendly channels.

McDowell said he's reluctant to take further steps anytime soon. "It may be that consumer demand favors a private-sector resolution to that problem, so let's see how that goes."

McDowell supports Martin's approach to the FCC's pending review of media-ownership issues. Martin has said that he would like to put consideration of the agency's decades-old ban on a company owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market on a separate, faster, track from the broader media-ownership review.

If the rules aren't changed, News Corp. and Tribune Corp. could be forced to sell newspapers or TV stations in key markets including New York and Hartford, Conn.

McDowell's comments are good news for newspaper companies such as Gannett, the largest U.S. publisher, said Paul Gallant, a Washington-based analyst with the Stanford Group.

"Those companies are concerned that keeping all the rules together will take longer to complete and might even reduce the ultimate degree of cross-ownership flexibility," Gallant said.

Media-ownership changes have been stalled at the FCC for more than 18 months, a period when the agency had four commissioners — two Republicans and two Democrats — creating a stalemate. The two Democrats have opposed efforts to relax media-ownership restrictions for broadcast and cable companies.

News Corp., Tribune and other companies were able to acquire waivers to the newspaper cross-ownership rules with the expectation that they would be thrown out before the waivers expired. The waivers have expired and the rules have not been changed.

While McDowell said he prefers a nonintrusive approach, he did spearhead the FCC's effort to bring Comcast and a regional sports team to an agreement that ended a 16-month stalemate. The deal signed Aug. 4 by the two companies will bring Washington National's baseball games to more than 1 million Washington, D.C.-area homes for the first time.