Because the FCC was established as an independent federal agency, the "checks and balances" on it are not the same as they would be for administrative agencies (such as the Food and Drug Administration), which answer directly to the U.S. president. Although the president selects the chair and the commissioners (who must be approved by the Senate), the president does not have the authority to remove commissioners during their terms. The FCC is much more beholden to Congress, which controls not only appropriations but also the commission's very existence. Since 1981, the FCC is no longer a permanent agency but instead must be reauthorized by Congress every two years. Therefore, Congress' influence over the FCC has increased significantly during the 1980s and 1990s.

The FCC has a dual role: on the one hand, it makes rules and regulations to carry out the Communications Act, but it also serves as a judicial body, hearing appeals of its decisions. As a quasi-judicial agency, the FCC has the duty of both making rules and also serving as an adjudicator in cases dealing with rules violations and challenges. While the FCC has the responsibility for making, policing, and judging the rules, its decisions are subject to court review. For example, the FCC created a rule requiring regular station identification. It also enforces the rule by asking stations whether they have adhered to it. In cases where stations have been found to violate the rule, the FCC must decide what punishment, if any, to apply. If the offending station challenges the decision, it appeals the judgment to the FCC. In this role, the FCC serves as the equivalent of a federal district·court. FCC decisions that are upheld in appeal can then be challenged by appealing directly to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit.

Commissioners

The FCC has five commissioners (reduced from seven in 1983), one of whom serves as the chair. Members are appointed by the U.S. president and approved by the Senate. The term of office for commissioners is five years, and they may serve multiple terms. No more than three commissioners from one political party may serve simultaneously.

Although the FCC chair has the same one vote as any of the other four commissioners, the chair has a greater ability to influence the direction of the FCC. The chair's role in selecting issues to pursue sets an agenda for the commission. During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the FCC adopted a more deregulatory approach, eliminating a number of rules and streamlining the radio license renewal process. Under the leadership of chairmen Richard Wiley, Charles Ferris, and Mark Fowler, the FCC revisited its responsibilities under the concept of the public interest, adopting the philosophy that the public interest is best served by allowing marketplace forces to function. In the 1990s Chairman Reed Hunt decided to investigate the possibilities of high-definition television and formed a task force to study it. Chairman William Kennard pursued the possibility of adding low-power FM stations to the radio band to provide increased opportunities for disenfranchised members of society to be heard. Although no chair has been successful in pursuing all of his interests, each has had the opportunity to set the commission's, and thus to a certain extent the nation's, communications policy agenda.

The majority of commissioners over the years have been lawyers (the last engineer commissioner retired in 1963). FCC commissioners are creatures of politics and as such are often more versed in politics than in technology. A number of commissioners have had no technological background prior to joining the commission. They count on their staff advisers and employees to provide them with the necessary background information. Fewer than half the commissioners have served their full five-year terms. When they leave the commission, they frequently join communications companies or legal firms providing consulting services. Commission staff members often find themselves dealing with former commissioners.

The personality of the FCC changes over time, based on the various personalities of the commissioners who serve and the political climate of the period. Space does not permit a listing of all former FCC commissioners and their contributions, but a few should be noted. Frieda B. Hennock, the first woman appointed to the commission in 1948, served during the critical period of the television "freeze" (1948-52). During those four years, the FCC stopped licensing new TV stations while it decided the issues of color TV, UHF versus VHF transmission, and channel allocation policies. Benjamin L. Hooks, the first African-American commissioner, was appointed in 1972 and worked diligently for the enforcement of equal employment opportunities. Henry Rivera was the first Hispanic commissioner, appointed in 1981. Robert E. Lee has the distinction of having served longer than any other commissioner to date, from 1953 until 1981. William Kennard was the first African American chairman when appointed in 1993.

FCC commissioners have been perceived alternately as pro- and anti-broadcasting. FCC chairmen James L. Fly (appointed 1939) and Newton N. Minow (appointed 1961) were public interest advocates who raised the ire of many broadcasters during their respective terms. Fly chaired the FCC during the forced sale of the NBC "Blue" Network. Minow is perhaps best remembered for referring to television as a "vast wasteland" in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters.

On the other hand, James Quello joined the commission in 1974 after retiring from his position as vice president and general manager of station WJR in Detroit. Quello's Senate confirmation hearings lasted longer than any other commissioner's because a number of public interest groups, fearing that he would be too favorable to broadcast interests (Quello replaced public interest advocate Nicholas Johnson), opposed his nomination. In spite of the lengthy process, Quello was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate. While Quello served as interim FCC chair, Broadcasting magazine called him "the broadcasters' chairman." In spite of his strong support of broadcast interests, Quello was critical of indecency on radio.

Staff

Although the FCC has only five commissioners, there are nearly 2,000 staff members in dozens of different departments, including a dozen field offices across the U.S. The five FCC commissioners must officially hold a public meeting at least once a month. The business of the commission is largely conducted as items circulate among the commissioners in between meetings, and at the staff level in the operating bureaus. The FCC is divided administratively into a number of offices and bureaus, to which the bulk of the commission's work is delegated. The six major operating FCC bureaus are Comumer and Governmental Affairs, Enforcement, International, Media, Wireless Telecommunications, and Wireline Competition. Most licensing and regulatory activity undertaken in the name of the FCC occurs at this level.

Of greatest concern to broadcasters is the Media Bureau (previously called the Broadcast Bureau), which regulate AM, FM, and television broadcast stations and related facilities. It assigns frequencies and call letters to stations and designates operating power and sign-on and sign-off times. It also assigns stations in each service within the allocated frequency bands with specific locations, frequencies, and powers. It regulates existing stations, ensuring that stations operate in accordance with rules and in accordance with the technical provisions of their authorizations.

The Media Bureau has five divisions: Audio, Video, Policy, Industry Analysis, and Engineering. The Audio Division receives and evaluates approximately 5,500 applications per year for the nation's approximately 14,000 AM, FM commercial, FM noncommercial educational, and FM translator and booster stations. These applications include station modification applications, applications for new stations, assignment or transfer applications, license applications, and renewal applications.

Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, radio and television stations are licensed for eight years (into the 1980s, the standard term was only three). Licensees are obligated to comply with statutes, rules, and policies relating to program content, such as identifying sponsors of material that is broadcast. The bureau ensures that licensees make available equal opportunities for use of broadcast facilities by political candidates or opposing political candidates, station identification, and identification of recorded programs or program segments. Licensees who have violated FCC rules, and most especially licensees who have "misrepresented" themselves, are subject to such sanctions as forfeitures (fines), short-term renewals, or (rarely) license revocation.

Other FCC offices are established by the commission as organizational tools for handling the tremendous variety of commission tasks. The current FCC offices are Administrative Law Judges, Communication Business Opportunities, Engineering and Technology, General Counsel, Inspector General, Legislative Affairs, Managing Director, Media Relations, Plans and Policy, and Workplace Diversity. In its attempt to carry out the wishes of Congress as expressed in the Communications Act, the FCC creates or deletes rules. Proposals for new rules come from a variety of sources both within and outside the commission. To begin assessing a new service or proposal on which it has little information, the commission may issue a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) seeking advice and answers to specific questions. If the FCC plans a new rule, it first issues a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). The NPRM gives formal notice that the FCC is considering a rule and provides a required length of time during which the commission must allow public comments. After sufficient comment and discussion, new rules are adopted in FCC Reports and Orders and are published in its own official report series, the FCC Record, as well as in the government's daily Federal Register. The rules are collected annually into Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Licensing

Without a doubt, the greatest power of the FCC is its power to license or not license a station. Since its inception, the commission has modified its rules and procedures for determining the manner in which it grants licenses. In keeping with the directive of the Communications Act, the FCC has always licensed stations to operate "in the public interest, convenience, and necessity." The specific manner in which it has made determinations a·bout individual licensees, however, has undergone changes. For decades, the FCC would examine all applicants for a license to determine which would best serve the public interest, considering a range of characteristics, including preferences for local ownership, minority ownership, experienced ownership, and the character of the owners. Even a station that had been in operation for years faced the prospect of losing its license to a superior applicant in a renewal proceeding. The FCC had to conduct time-consuming and expensive comparative hearings whenever two or more applicants sought the same frequency.

The FCC and the broadcast industry have long been critical of the comparative process, which was largely eliminated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Now, existing stations have an expectation of license renewal, provided they have not violated important commission rules. The FCC does not allow a new challenger to draw an existing station that has served the public interest into a comparative process. To avoid comparative hearings in the case of new stations, the FCC in 1999 adopted an auction process similar to what it had used earlier for other nonbroadcast frequencies. Rather than spend months (sometimes years) in comparative hearings, the FCC instead determines whether applicants meet minimum eligibility requirements. If they do, the applicants can then bid for new, available stations or purchase existing outlets.

The FCC does not monitor the broadcasts of radio and television stations. It relies on information provided to it by broadcasters, competitors, and audiences. Determinations about whether a station deserves to have its license renewed are based on documents filed by the station, any public comments the commission receives about that station, and challenges to the renewal by interested parties.

The commission is able to enforce regulations primarily through the threat of license action. The majority of license renewals are granted with no disciplinary action by the FCC. However, should the commission find rules violations by a licensee, its actions can range from a letter admonishing a station to fines of up to $250,000 and a short-term renewal of the license, and even to the revocation of a license. It is the threat of this action that keeps broadcasters in compliance.

The FCC has the ultimate authority to revoke a station's license or deny its renewal, although that action has rarely been taken. In more than 60 years, the FCC has taken this action only 147 times: an average of fewer than three per year out of thousands of license renewals. More than one-third of those revocations and nonrenewals were due to misrepresentations to the commission. Although such cases have been infrequent, the FCC has acted severely in cases where licensees have intentionally lied.

In 1998, the FCC revoked the license for Bay City, Texas, station KFCC because the owner "engaged in a pattern of outright falsehoods, evasiveness, and deception." Chameleon Radio Corporation had been awarded a license to serve Bay City, but it attempted to move the transmitter closer to Houston, to the extent that Bay City would not even be served by the station. The FCC cited the station for repeated misrepresentations and lack of candor. Chameleon attempted to argue that the merit of its programming should protect it from revocation. The FCC responded that "meritorious programming does not mitigate serious deliberate misconduct such as misrepresentation." Also that year, licenses were revoked for seven stations in Missouri and Indiana that were owned by Michael Rice through three different corporations. Rice was convicted of 12 felonies involving sexual assaults of children. The FCC was prepared to allow the corporations to continue heir ownership of the stations after their assertion that Rice would not be involved in station operation. The commission revoked the licenses on a finding that Rice was in fact involved in station operation and that "misrepresentations and lack of candor regarding his role at the stations" was cause for revocation.

Despite all the powers given to the FCC, the 1934 Communications Act specifically states that the commission may not censor the content of broadcasts. According to Section 32.6, "Nothing in this Act shall be understood or construed to give this Commission the power of censorship over the radio communications or signals transmitted by any radio station." Nevertheless, the FCC's reprimands and fines of stations for broadcasting indecent material at inappropriate times have been upheld by the Supreme Court. The FCC acknowledges its obligation to stay out of content decisions in most areas. The commission has declined to base license decisions on the proposed format of a radio station, and it no longer stipulates the amount of time stations should devote to public service announcements.

Spectrum Management

The FCC also has the important responsibility of managing all users (except the federal government) of the electromagnetic spectrum. This involves two processes. First, the FCC must allocate different uses for different parts of the spectrum in an efficient way that does not create interference. This is followed by the allotment of specific frequencies or channels to particular areas. Licensing of the allotments follows. (AM does not have allotments.) There have been two significant spectrum reallocations affecting radio. In 1945 the FCC moved FM's allocation from 42 to 50 megahertz up to its current location at 88 to 108 megahertz, more than doubling the available channels but rendering the existing FM receivers and transmitters obsolete. In 1979 the upper end of the AM band moved from 1605 kilohertz to 1705 kilohertz to accommodate ten additional AM channels-a change that took years to implement (the first stations shifted to the new higher frequencies only moved in the 1990s).

A second part of maintaining spectrum efficiency is approving equipment that uses the electromagnetic spectrum. The FCC must be certain that all devices emitting electromagnetic signals do so within their prescribed limits. "Type acceptance" is the FCC process of approving equipment that emits electromagnetic radio waves. In most cases, the evidence for type acceptance is provided by the equipment's manufacturer, who provides a written application with a complete technical description of the product and a test report showing compliance with the technical requirements. An FCC identification number can be found on the backs of telephones, walkie-talkies, pagers, and even microwave ovens. The number does not imply that the FCC has inspected that particular unit but rather that the product meets certain FCC minimal standards designed to avoid interference.

Policy is sometimes the result of inaction by the FCC. For years, the commission was faced with what to do about AM stereo. Rather than choosing a standard from among competing applicants, the FCC adopted in 1982. a marketplace philosophy to allow a winner to emerge from marketplace decisions rather than their own. Many broadcasters believe the introduction of AM stereo was negatively affected by the commission's "decision not to decide." Some stations were reluctant to invest in AM stereo equipment, fearing they might select the losing standard and then lose thousands of dollars. Radio receiver manufacturers had the same concern. The FCC's decision "not to decide" virtually killed any chance for AM stereo.