Jonathan Adelstein leaving the FCC? Hmm.. What's going on here?

[cascadiance]

Adelstein was one of the good guys, and I would warrant would be hard to replace with someone decent. I hope we don't get a corporatist to replace him not as keen on doing heavy media reform. We need more info on this move now!

From:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyYrpS0VlnTFNkxRGckWy9oC-r5QD973UKB00

FCC member asked to lead rural utility push

1 day ago

NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama wants FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to be the new head of the Rural Utilities Service.

The agency is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was founded during the Great Depression to bring electricity to farmers. It has just received nearly $4 billion in stimulus money to give rural America better access to high-speed Internet access and clean water.

The president did not say who would replace Adelstein, a Democrat, at the Federal Communications Commission. It normally has five members, but is down to three. Without Adelstein, it would not have quorum, so his move to the Rural Utility Service is likely to be on hold until he is replaced.

Adelstein has served on the FCC for six years.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[soothsayer]

1. Feh, the mel cooley lookalike relished his publicity of standing in the way of the Sirius XM

merger. But I only know him on that one issue and only met him once so can't say if he's good or bad.

[cascadiance]

2. Actually i still don't like that Sirius/XM merger...

I think it will eventually lead to stripping out a lot of content that we might miss (and have no competitive environment to demand that it come back).

The merger should have focused on the technology pieces and left the two content arms separate and competing with each other.

Actually as I understand it, when they laid down the space for Satellite Radio broadcasting, my understanding is that the FCC wanted to have the different entries have the same shared broadcasting/receiving technology, which these two entities didn't abide by, which I think lead to the problems they had in added expenses of "doing their own thing" that they did to try to lock in customers early on the way cell phone companies have. That whole merger should have "fixed" that problem and kept the content part of the merger from happening otherwise, at least as a first step, to see if the two companies would get added benefits from the common transmission environment. Then everyone might have been happy.

Just this weekend I think I noticed some of the hosts I was used to listening to being replaced (Mike Feder on Sirius Left wasn't on). Without a competitive environment, they'll probably leave the droids like Lynn Samuels in and take out others like Thom Hartmann which would be a bad deal. Had they still been two competitive environments with a common broadcast space, they might have had to be even more competitive and amp up their offerings, instead of just doing it the way they want without paying attention to customer tastes and wants.

[blogslut]

3. I'll be fine as long as Obama leaves this man in charge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Copps
http://www.fcc.gov/commissioners/copps/biography.html
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_Copps