by Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix:
"Michael Powell may have been feeling just a little bit sorry for himself last February 1. As he sat down to watch the Super Bowl with his two kids, the onetime prince of media deregulation must have wondered where it had all gone wrong. His very position as chair of the Federal Communications Commission was in doubt.
And Powell’s reputation as the master of a new media universe was rapidly becoming a joke.
The irony is that if Powell were truly concerned about indecency, he wouldn’t be so quick to allow big media to get even bigger. Because according to media activists of varying political persuasions, media concentration itself has led to a lack of choice that, in turn, makes it attractive for corporations to fatten their bottom line with cheap, sleazy programming like Married by America, a favorite target of the moral crusaders.
This past June, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ordered the FCC to reconsider its plan to deregulate media ownership. It was yet another setback for Michael Powell, a man who came into office with a technocrat’s vision, who sees regulation as part of the past, who’d rather talk about WiFi and voice-over Internet and digital television than about old-fashioned issues such as government regulation of content.
Trouble is, the first legacy Powell chose for himself slipped out of his grasp. The second — the great moral crusade — may not be the one he wanted. But it’s unquestionably the one with which he’s stuck."
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