Obama Picks FCC Transition Team Leaders

The transition team for President-elect Barack Obama has named the FCC agency review team leaders, which will oversee the folks who will kick the tires on the FCC.

They are Susan Crawford, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former partner at DC communications firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (WilmerHale), and Kevin Werbach an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

The naming of two academics to head the FCC review team squares with an industry source’s suggestion that the Obama folks would tend toward academe, part of the effort to avoid the influence of entrenched Washington that has been one of the campaign themes.

They were part of a host of agency review teams announced Friday.

The teams will “complete a thorough review of key departments, agencies and commissions of the United States government, as well as the White House, to provide the President-elect, Vice President-elect, and key advisors with information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration,”  said the transition team in announcing the names. “The Teams will ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in.”

They are scheduled to begin their work as early as Monday.

Former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera will be on the National Science Foundation review team.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.