Media ownership rules safe in FCC nominee Julius Genachowski's hands

THE nomination of Julius Genachowski, 46, to replace Kevin Martin as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is a hopeful step.

Like many of President Obama's appointees, Genachowski had experience in the Clinton administration. He was chief counsel to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. Since then, Genachowski has worked for IAC/Interactive, the parent company for Ticketmaster, Match.com and the Home Shopping Network. He also has his own investment advisory firm.

He is a buddy of Obama's. He was a colleague of the President-Elect on the Harvard Law Review.

Genachowski is an improvement over Martin for several reasons. Martin did not believe the FCC should forbid the same company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in a local market; he thought cable, satellite and Internet technology had made the issue of monopoly moot, and that if media moguls bought up radio and TV properties like strings of collectible jewels, the people had nothing to worry about.

Genachowski knows better. The media-ownership restrictions that almost fell under Martin will be in safer hands.

Martin has also been unreliable on "net neutrality," though last August he weighed in on the right side of 3-to-2 ruling against the cable giant Comcast.

Net neutrality is the principle that the owner of the network, or pieces of it, should not restrict users for reasons against their interests, such as to deny them the right to use certain services because those services are owned by somebody else.

Genachowski is a proponent of net neutrality, which is the right principle for the Internet.