Federal Communications Commission history

In 1939, at the World’s Fair, when wireless television was debuted, the demonstration featured a special television created out of glass, to counter rumors that it featured tiny actors on a miniature stage.

To me, the “technical reasons” excuse was best shown in 1944, as the professor already mentioned, when the FCC got a couple of petitions with a bold proposal: toss every FM station off its assigned frequency and relocate the entire industry up the dial.

But in 1945, the FCC reconsidered and uprooted the entire band.

In 1948, the FCC put a freeze on awarding new television station licenses because the fast pace of licensing prior to 1948 had created conflicts with the signals.

But the FCC did not start granting new television station licenses again until late in 1952.

A significant monopoly that was broken up by the Justice Department was the telecommunications monopoly owned by AT&T. After AT&T was broken up into a series of smaller companies, the government passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Yet by 2005, the regime called by its practitioners “mother may I” had been, at least in significant part, reformed.

In 2014, the idea of "net neutrality" gained momentum as the FCC indicated that it might want to change its stance on allowing Internet providers to limit access to users and website owners who would not pay a premium.

The Cato Institute has released its 2019 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity.