The Media Borg's man in Washington

FCC chairman Michael Powell, Colin's smooth, ambitious son, has never met a media merger he didn't like.

Editor's note: Fourth in a series on the consolidation of power and ownership in the media landscape.

By Eric Boehlert

Aug. 6, 2001 | For the newly minted chairman of the suddenly influential Federal Communications Commission, it was a rare slip of the tongue.

Testifying this spring before the House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Michael Powell, the barrel-chested son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, was asked about current regulations that limit the number of individual television stations a broadcaster can own.

The regulations are in place to ensure that national network broadcasters such as NBC and ABC don't buy up so many affiliate stations that local ownership becomes a thing of the past. Powell was also asked about the quarter-century-old regulation that forbids media companies from owning a TV station and a newspaper in the same city.

A silky-smooth public speaker, Powell is an exceptionally effective witness before Congress: quick as a whip yet with a soldier's respect for authority. He is also an articulate free-market advocate who has previously made no secret of his distaste for the controversial rules, which prevent a broadcaster from owning stations that reach more than 35 percent of the general public. Pressed at the hearing by fellow deregulator-in-arms Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., Powell testified, "My effort is to always go back to my substantive points. Validate or eliminate. The 35 percent national ownership rule, if I remember correctly, is promulgated in the 1970s with an entirely different media environment than the present one, and should be validated if it has any merit at all in the current context."

In other words, according to Powell, if the FCC can't justify the ownership limits, which must be reviewed every two years, then they ought to be abolished. Period. But Powell was a little shaky on the facts. The law, as passed by Congress, says otherwise: it's up to opponents of ownership caps to prove that the limits should be dropped, not the FCC. Powell also misspoke about dating the 35 percent figure back to the 1970s -- ownership caps were actually raised from 25 to 35 percent in 1996.

But Powell's questionable comments made no news that afternoon. Instead, committee members spent much of the day tipping their hats to one of Washington's fastest-rising movers and shakers.

A would-be star in the Army until serious injuries from an end-over-end jeep accident on a German autobahn cut his military career short, in just a few short years Powell has hopped from a coveted court clerkship to a prestigious law firm to a chief of staff at the Department of Justice, all with the aid of A-list Beltway mentors from both major parties.

His personal bio is just as appealing. Married to his college sweetheart, Powell is a devoted family man who often gets to work before the sun comes up so he can spend time at night watching the Cartoon Network with his two young children.

And now he runs the FCC, and does so with unprecedented authority. "No FCC chairman, from Day One, has been more politically powerful, more well-connected and more knowledgeable," says Reed Hundt, President Clinton's first FCC chairman, "since perhaps Newton Minow during JFK's administration."

Michael Powell may need every last bit of that power and those connections, because his fast trip to the top has suddenly landed him in the hot seat. The ailing telecommunications sector that the FCC oversees is suffering its worst economic downturn ever. At the same time, Powell and the FCC are plunging full speed ahead into a political struggle over the ever-thorny issue of media consolidation. Politics, the economy and the media are all converging, and Powell is the man in the middle.

Next page: Is a backlash against the FCC's wonder boy brewing?