Copps Revives FCC Consumer Advisory Panel, Members Say

Many predicted Copps will be more involved with the committee than Kevin Martin was. Martin never attended a meeting while he was chairman. He spoke to the committee once, through a recorded video, said Debra Berlyn, the panel’s chairman. “We felt it was difficult to deliver the message to higher people” at the FCC and the NTIA, especially Martin, said Nixyvette Santini, representing the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “There definitely is a change… People are more engaged now.”

Copps has attended many of the committee’s meetings and seems inclined to work with the group as he tries to make the commission more open to the public, improve its Web site and prompt bureau officials to speak more freely with FCC members, committee members said. The committee has gotten “a breath of fresh air,” said Karen Peltz Strauss, representing Communication Service for the Deaf: “It spoke volumes, when Chairman Copps spoke he sat at the table with us, as opposed to standing on the podium.”

Showing that the group’s recommendations are gaining steam is Copps’ decision to start a technical working group on DTV closed captioning, as the committee recommended about a year ago, Strauss and others said. Copps’ visit “showed that we now have a leader at the FCC who truly does care about the work of our committee,” said Berlyn, representing the Digital Television Transition Coalition. Many but not all recommendations from the committee -- re-chartered for two years by Martin shortly before he left -- got adequate attention from the commission, Berlyn said.

There’s room for improvement, and Copps has signaled he’s serious about achieving it, Berlyn and others said. “What has not been entirely transparent to us are the goals and objectives from the commission,” said Brandon Stephens, representing the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “We can create a more symbiotic relationship with the commission” and deal with matters of importance to all consumers and to Native Americans in particular, such as broadband access in remote areas, he said. Copps “indicated that the DTV transition would have been different if the FCC had listened more to the CAC in the past,” said member Ken McEldowney of Consumer Action. “The message here is clear,” said member Charles Benton, of the Benton Foundation: “Chairman Copps believes that advisory committees are a valuable resource for commission decision-making.”

The committee’s work would have benefited from engineers and other bureau staffers besides front-office officials attending meetings more often to advise on technical issues, said Dan Isett, representing the Parents Television Council: “Most of those kinds of questions went to a representative of the NAB or the representative from CEA” and not an FCC official at past meetings: “It’s just good business to have those folks who do the work right there in the room so you can ask the questions.”

The committee has a broader perspective than offered by many industry groups in ex parte meetings and in written comments, said the members we spoke with. Commissioners don’t always get “the feeling of what’s happening on the street,” which the committee gives them because diverse industry and consumer groups take part, Santini said. Working with organizations like Consumers Union, Consumer Action and others taking part in the committee, the FCC can “gear up to get meaningful, outside-the-Beltway input,” Benton said. The Consumer Electronics Association, too, thinks “this is an important venue for dialogue on communications issues that impact consumers,” said Jamie Hedlund, the group’s vice president of regulatory affairs and a panelist. Committee meetings are “far different from the comments and feedback that the FCC usually gets, which push the position of just one player or another,” McEldowney said. “The CAC meetings feature unstructured and open discussion and its recommendations usually reflect a consensus.”