The FCC “has outlived the economic and technological conditions that justified its creation.”
That’s the view of American Enterprise Institute nonresident senior fellow Mark Jamison, the esteemed University of Florida professor within the Warrington School of Business. In justifying his argument, Jamison argues, “As its original mission has faded, the FCC has become increasingly politicized, aligning with shifting partisan agendas rather than exercising independent expertise.”
As such, the “decline of FCC independence” should prompt a reallocation of the agency’s essential functions while disbanding the Commission altogether.
Jamison presents his position in a “working paper,” in which he says the “monopolistic telephone and spectrum scarcity environments of 1934 have been replaced by dynamic, intermodal competition across broadband, wireless, and satellite platforms, eroding the rationale for common carrier and broadcasting regulation.”
Jamison’s paper reviews the historical foundations of commission regulation and the evolution of communications markets, as it pinpoints the moments the agency lost its independence and ability to withstand Executive Brand influence.
“President Donald Trump is making a good case for joining the list as he works to remove regulatory barriers for artificial intelligence (AI) and the supply chain for the AI stack,” Jamison writes. “It appears that he should add disbanding the FCC to his list of deregulatory accomplishments.”
Why? Jamison points to a “mission vacuum,” making the FCC “a convenient political tool.”
When it all begin? Jamison points to the waning years of the Obama Administration, and the FCC under Tom Wheeler, which decided Title II broadband classification would bring “net neutrality” — a highly divisive matter that saw Republican leadership rescind the move, only to have Democrats during the Biden Administration bring it back. Today, with President Trump back in the White House, “net neutrality” is dead again.
That’s not to say Obama is the only president to use the FCC as a political tool. Jamison notes the agency has been subject to “withstanding pressure from Trump to regulate social media during his first term, and reaching beyond its authority during President Joe Biden’s administration to try to oversee broadband supply chains and support organizations.”
Then there is the FCC’s plan to investigate newsrooms’ choices of content. No, we’re not talking about President Trump in 2026, but President Obama in 2012.
“The agency’s pursuit of political agendas emerged in 2012 with an FCC plan to investigate newsrooms’ choices of content, looking for bias and for inattention to themes, such as ‘environment’ and ‘economic opportunities,’ in which the Obama administration was particularly interested,” Jamison writes. “The FCC said its planned investigation into newsrooms ‘may assist the Commission in assessing the need for government action.’ The FCC received numerous criticisms for investigating how broadcasters select stories and eventually dropped the investigation without explanation.”
What is Jamison’s solution? Congress should create a “knowledge transfer” from expert FCC staff to the state broadband offices. Radio spectrum management, were the FCC to disappear, would be “handed to other agencies.”
He states, “Across all distribution technologies, consumer preferences have shifted toward flexibility in time, place, and device. OVDs offer the greatest adaptability through vast on-demand libraries and multi-device access. MVPDs attempt to mimic this flexibility using DVR, video-on-demand, and out-of-home streaming features, while some providers are exiting the video business to focus on broadband. OTA broadcasters remain tied to linear programming and their content is widely redistributed via MVPDs, and OVDs. Because consumers increasingly view broadcast programming through non-broadcast channels and regard it as one option among many, broadcasting no longer constitutes an industry in the traditional sense and deserve no special licensing other than a right to use radio spectrum.”
There remain a few other FCC functions that should be distributed to other agencies, Jamison concludes. “Consumer protection should be handled by the Federal Trade Commission where other consumer protections lie,” he writes. “Equipment authorization functions could be handled by NIST. Emergency services oversight could be handled by the Department of Commerce, CISA, or Homeland Security. Space policy could be handled by NASA and international relations are already covered by the Department of State.
“Eliminating the FCC and redistributing its remaining legitimate functions would provide a coherent deregulatory strategy. Common-carrier oversight and broadcast content oversight would end, while residual responsibilities—such as equipment authorization, consumer-protection matters, and spectrum administration—would be reassigned to more appropriate agencies.”
Jamison elaborates on his reasons the Commission should be disbanded in a 56-page dissertation, which can be viewed here.
