The FCC giveth and the FCC taketh away
By Deron Snyder When we consider the history of sweeping government regulations that made a direct, personal impact on the day-to-day lives of virtually everyone in America, the 1996 Telecommunications Act can hold its own against all contenders. With the explosion of cable and digital products in the three decades after the Supreme Court sided with the Federal Communications Commission in U.S. v. Southwestern Cable (1968) , arguably nothing changed our society more than technological advancements in the delivery of news, information and entertainment. Government regulators struggled to keep pace with those advancements, which brought businesses to fore that were unimaginable a few years earlier, not to mention way back when the 1934 Communications Act created the FCC to oversee the telephone, telegraph and radio industries. More than 60 later, federal legislators took a figurative sledgehammer to the FCC’s industries, which had grown to include broadcast, cable, satellite and d