Book Excerpt: The Creation Of The FCC Edition

"Signed by the president on June 18, the Communications Act of 1934 created a single seven-member body, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to regulate radio as well as interstate and international telegraph, cable, and telephone services. Although it formally repealed the Radio Act of 1927, the new measure reenacted nearly all the provisions of the earlier legislation, much of it verbatim. The FCC is often described as a New Deal agency, but this is primarily the result of a coincidence of timing. Though the legislation had Roosevelt's signature, the actual substance had [President] Hoover's name wriiten all over it. It was hoover who had presided over the key constitutive choices in broadcasting and broadcast regulation; the 1934 legislation ratified and consolidated these earlier decisions." -From, "The Creation Of The Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications" By: Paul Starr