Below is a recent profile of William Kennard, Chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission. In a few months, the FCC is expected to
release the accessibility guidelines for telecommunications equipment and
services. The proposed regulations that were released last year and which
Kennard reviewed and approved before their release would not provide much
more access than what currently exists today. It is one thing to talk
about oppressed and underserved groups. It is another to take substantive
action.
kelly
The New York Times
April 11, 1999
At F.C.C., a Referee for the Future
By STEPHEN LABATON
LOS ANGELES -- As Bill Kennard raced through a whirlwind of
meetings in Southern California one day last month, his passions
and preoccupations as the nation's top telecommunications official
quickly became clear.
To a small group of studio and network executives in a screening
room at the William Morris Agency
, Kennard, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission,
offered his assurances that he had no interest in regulating the
Internet, the medium on which many people in Hollywood are staking
new fortunes.
Earlier that rainy morning, over breakfast with executives of the
local chapter of the National Urban League, he pledged to fight for
more jobs for minority executives and greater investment in
minority-owned broadcasting and telecommunications companies so
that, in the words of one league official, blacks would not become
"hitchhikers on the information superhighway."
He also dropped by the inner-city elementary school where his
mother had once taught to celebrate its connection to the Internet.
The connection came courtesy of the e-rate program, a subsidy
financed by a new fee on telephone users that he worked to
establish with Vice President Al Gore.
Kennard, a black telecommunications lawyer raised in an integrated
Los Angeles neighborhood, was in many ways more comfortable in
these settings than he is back in Washington. That he devoted so
much time on this fairly typical trip to minority issues -- issues
that have been low priorities even within the Democratic
Administration he serves -- revealed the depth of his predicament.
Though he runs an agency that rules on issues of central importance
to the nation's fastest-growing industries, Kennard has found
himself politically hemmed in from the start. A compromise
appointee who has had little influence at the White House, he lacks
the traditional sort of political base that would let him either
stake bold positions or achieve consensus among warring factions
with interests before the F.C.C.: local and long-distance phone
companies, cable operators and broadcasters, small radio stations
and large media conglomerates.
As a result, he has come to rely for support and advice on
Washington's black power structure -- the Congressional Black
Caucus, for example, and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the lawyer who
serves on many corporate boards when he is not advising his close
friend Bill Clinton -- and to emphasize causes that match their
priorities.
Simultaneously, he has struggled to write the rules that will put
in place the most contentious telecommunications legislation in the
nation's history, a three-year-old law that has largely been tied
up in court fights between the agency and the industries it
oversees.
Kennard's supporters agree with him that telecommunications
deregulation is inextricably linked to goals like increasing
minority ownership of TV stations or getting basic phone service to
Indian reservations.
"In implementing the telecom structure for the next decade and
beyond, he's determined to retain the steady pressure for increased
diversity that he rightly believes has been one of the most
powerful forces for retaining America's lead in the world economy,"
said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a friend who is also the president of
the Media Access Project, a public-interest law firm in Washington
that promotes consumer rights and diversity on the airwaves.
But to his critics, Kennard has overstepped his bounds, diverting
the agency from its basic mission and moving too slowly to
deregulate the most dynamic sector of the nation's economy.
"Chairman Kennard has been off on these other agendas before he has
completed the work he was assigned to complete -- the deregulation
of the marketplace," said Representative W. J. (Billy) Tauzin, the
Louisiana Republican who chairs the House telecommunications
subcommittee. "If I had an employee who did that, we would have had
a very, very short conversation before that employee would be out
looking for another job."
Disharmony With the Hill
Though his detractors concede that Kennard is perhaps the most
genial official in Washington, his style has done little to blunt
the alienation of many lobbyists and lawmakers from the F.C.C.
His predecessor, Reed E. Hundt, had notoriously bad relations with
Congress, though he had greater access to the White House, having
gone to St. Albans prep school with Al Gore and Yale Law School
with Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Under Kennard, relations with Congress have only deteriorated, in
part over policies he has advocated and in part because of early
political blunders. The F.C.C. has few allies on its oversight
committees, even among Democrats, and a movement has gradually been
building steam to cut the agency's budget and pare its authority.
Kennard's isolation stems from the agency's repeated decisions to
spurn applications by the Baby Bell companies to enter the
long-distance markets, on the grounds that they have failed to open
their own local markets to competition from the long-distance
carriers. The Baby Bells, which have many powerful friends in
Congress, say that they have complied with the Telecommunications
Act of 1996, which set the ground rules for competition, and that
Kennard's decisions have cost them billions of dollars.
"It takes forever to get these sorts of issues out of the F.C.C."
said Roy Neel, a former Clinton White House official who is now
president of the United States Telephone Association, which
represents the Bells. "There is a pervasive culture at the agency
which has kept a stranglehold on the industry."
Hugh B. Price, president of the National Urban League, praises the
chairman for his work on issues of concern to minority groups. But
as a director of Bell Atlantic, he says the agency has moved too
cautiously.
"On some of the regulatory issues, they've got to let the
marketplace rip a little bit and let these things roll," Price
said. "They have not been able to do it yet."
Nonetheless, some of the Bells have adapted to Kennard's style and
agenda. When Bell Atlantic officials recently sought regulatory
relief on an obscure telephone issue, they sent an all-black
lobbying team. Kennard recalled the episode with humor, and said
the company ultimately got what it had sought -- but on the merits.
And last week, GTE
announced that it would join with Georgetown Partners -- a private
investment firm headed by a black executive, Chester C. Davenport,
who has had no telecommunications experience -- for a $3.3 billion
purchase of about half of Ameritech's wireless telephone business.
Because Ameritech has sought the F.C.C.'s permission to be acquired
by SBC Communications, and GTE has sought approval to be acquired
by Bell Atlantic, executives close to the wireless deal said the
parties brought in Davenport's firm in part to try to curry favor
with Kennard.
Broadcasters, another powerful lobby, have also found themselves at
odds with Kennard. They say he all but declared war on them a few
weeks ago by proposing a new rule that would enable thousands of
churches, schools and community groups around the nation to operate
low-power FM radio stations. The broadcasters see the new stations
as a source of signal interference. Kennard says the rule would
provide a new voice to the traditionally voiceless.
More often than not, the Federal courts have ruled in Kennard's
favor on big regulatory issues -- most notably when the Supreme
Court recently affirmed the agency's authority to implement some
core provisions of the Telecommunications Act. But the courts have
also handed setbacks to Kennard and the Clinton Administration on
the F.C.C.'s affirmative-action agenda.
The Building Blocks
William E. Kennard was born 42 years ago, the third child and only
son of middle-class parents in Los Angeles. His father, Robert, a
World War II veteran, was a successful architect; his mother,
Helen, was a bilingual elementary school teacher.
His parents, Kennard said, instilled a faith in the value of
cultural diversity. He and his sisters attended Hollywood High, at
the time one of the more integrated schools in Los Angeles.
But the larger world was often less accommodating. The fact that
successful blacks were rarely portrayed on television made a deep
impression.
"It was an event in my household when an African-American appeared
on a show," Kennard recalled. "People would run out of the bedroom
in excitement at those fleeting moments of images of black people
on television. When Bank of America featured a black teller in one
of its commercials, my mother was so excited that she changed the
family bank account."
At Stanford University, where he studied communications, Kennard
spent many hours producing a show called "Black Perspectives" for
the college radio station.
During an internship at a local NBC television affiliate -- he
wanted to become an investigative reporter -- Kennard was advised
by the station manager to go to law school. He wound up at Yale,
worked briefly after receiving his law degree at the National
Association of Broadcasters, specializing in First Amendment
issues, and then settled in as an associate at the Washington law
firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand, specializing
in telecommunications deals. Among his clients were NBC and a
number of minority broadcasters, including Robert L. Johnson, the
chairman and founder of Black Entertainment Television, the cable
network; Johnson remains a close friend and adviser.
Kennard also nurtured friendships with two of the most important
black lawyers then in Washington: Ronald H. Brown, whose photograph
is now on Kennard's office credenza, and Jordan, whose stepdaughter
he had befriended at Yale.
During the 1992 campaign, Kennard was part of the network of Yale
Law graduates that helped get Clinton elected President. Backed by
Brown, the Democratic National Committee chairman who became
Commerce Secretary, and Jordan, the co-chairman of the Clinton
transition team, he was offered the job of general counsel at the
F.C.C.
By all accounts, he and Hundt, then the chairman, worked well
together, though their personalities could hardly be more
different. Hundt quickly made enemies in Congress with his
confrontational style. Kennard, by contrast, was never seen
flashing a temper or raising his voice.
As general counsel, Kennard reversed the agency's mediocre court
record, compiling an impressive victory rate of about 85 percent in
the appeals courts. Still, he has also lost some big cases: An
appeals court ruling last year, for example, threw out the
requirements that radio and TV broadcasters take special steps to
seek minority and female job applicants.
When Hundt stepped down in 1997, Kennard was on no one's list to
succeed him. But with four of the five commission slots opening,
his allies waged an ultimately successful campaign to get him
nominated as chairman as part of a political compromise.
Jordan, he recalled, "would call me up, and in this low voice he
would say, 'You can be chairman, but wait.' " Even before the
question could be posed, Kennard volunteered that Jordan, one of
Washington's most influential lawyer-lobbyists, "never has asked me
for anything."
"He gives me advice because he's been a good friend and because he
wants to help me out," Kennard said.
An Albatross and a Storm
Little more than a year before Kennard's confirmation as chairman,
Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, the first major
overhaul of Federal communications law since the F.C.C. was created
in 1934. The law was hailed by both Congressional leaders and
President Clinton as a landmark that would deregulate the telephone
and cable industries, benefitting consumers. But it had many hidden
problems. It was poorly written, creating ambiguities that prompted
the industries that didn't get everything they wanted to file huge
lawsuits, slowing its implementation by the commission.
Moreover, the act left the most difficult rule-making decisions --
from the possibility of relaxing television-station ownership rules
to assuring universal phone service and money for the e-rate
program -- to the five unelected commissioners.
While the law has promoted competition and driven down some prices
-- notably for long-distance and cellular service -- it has not
achieved many other objectives, like making cable TV and local
phone services truly competitive. Some say that its main effect has
been to promote corporate consolidations.
Kennard had barely settled into the chairmanship when he
encountered his first maelstrom. Without consulting either Congress
or his fellow commissioners, he told reporters that he thought
liquor advertising should perhaps be banned from television. A few
weeks later, again without consultation, Kennard announced that the
F.C.C. would consider new rules requiring radio and television
stations to give free time to political candidates, a proposal the
President had made in his State of the Union Address a day earlier.
The resulting complaints from both the broadcasting industry and
many members of Congress forced him into a hasty retreat -- and
frittered away what little political capital he might have
otherwise enjoyed as a new agency leader.
( Kennard recently said that he had learned several lessons from
those setbacks -- including to refrain from issuing proposals that
are unlikely to succeed. "I've learned to be much more guarded," he
said. "Musing is not allowed.")
The two announcements poisoned whatever relationship Kennard could
have hoped to establish with many key lawmakers.
The venom was evident last month, when Representative John D.
Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Commerce
Committee, delivered a scathing public attack. "In terms of
substance, the current chairman may be a few affiliates short of a
network," he told the National Association of Broadcasters.
At an oversight hearing a few weeks later, Kennard tried, with
little success, to parry Dingell's thrusts as lobbyists watched
with the glee of ancient Romans at a gladiator match. Dingell
called Kennard "inept" and "ignorant." Republican members of the
committee sat silently, grinning. The Democrats sat mostly silent.
Where were Kennard's allies? Shortly before the hearing, Kennard
had dined with Johnson of Black Entertainment Television, who had
offered to ask lawmakers to persuade Dingell to tone down his
criticisms. Clearly, the effort didn't work.
Bound for Moving On
If anything could win Kennard some breathing room, it would be the
F.C.C.'s finally permitting the Bells to enter the long-distance
business. He and other commissioners have hinted that they may
relent later this year, particularly if state regulators concluded
that some local markets are becoming more competitive.
He has also been careful not to pick new fights, moving cautiously
on the other huge issue that has confronted him this year: whether
to order the opening of the high-speed cable pipeline being
developed by AT&T to other Internet service providers.
The pipeline promises to revolutionize cyberspace as millions of
Americans gain access to the Internet at speeds up to 100 times
faster than ordinary telephone lines. AT&T's rivals say that if
they cannot offer services over the lines, AT&T will be able to
dominate the Internet much as it controlled telephones for nearly a
century.
Kennard has indicated that he will not intervene in the debate at
this point -- a decision he made after C. Michael Armstrong,
chairman of AT&T, threatened to scuttle the company's pending
acquisition of Tele-Communications
Inc. TCI's cable systems not only will provide the basis for the
high-speed system but will also make it easier for AT&T to offer
local phone service -- thereby ending the Bell monopolies and
easing the way for the Bells' entry into the long-distance
business.
Kennard is also learning to use his office as a bully pulpit when
the courts rule against him. In light of his court defeat on
affirmative action, he has persuaded the networks to voluntarily
keep minority hiring a goal of their recruitment efforts, and he
has offered to support further loosening of the limits on
broadcasters' station holdings if they help increase the number of
minority-owned stations. He has also held a series of conferences
to encourage advertisers to buy time on radio stations aimed at
minority audiences.
"Sure I've been frustrated, because I think in some of these areas
the progress we've made has been reversed," Kennard said. But his
conciliatory streak runs deep. "You've got to move on," he said,
"to do the work that's necessary if you ever want to get things
done."
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