The Courts in Broadcast Regulatory Policy-Making

In the early decades of broadcast regulation, the regulatory process was dominated by (and largely restricted to) three major participants--Congress, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the industry itself. This balance of forces has now been altered by the increased involvement of three new participants in broadcast regulatory policy making the public, in the form of citizen groups; the White House, by means of special advisory bodies, appointment powers, budgetary control, and active communication-oriented divisions of Cabinet level agencies; and the courts, in the form of judicial opinions prescribing and precluding FCC policy initiatives. These three new activist participants in broadcast regulation have modified the FCC's role from one of making peace with Congress and a dominant industry to one of attempting to placate several, often antagonistic, interests.