Before the Federal Communications Commission
We had meetings on Thursday and Friday with advisors in the staff of Commissioners Martin, Copps, and Powell. On Friday, we also had a meeting with staff members from the Media Bureau and some of their colleagues in other Bureaus.
We tried to make the case to them that the broadcast flag mandate was unwarranted and a counterproductive idea. I think the staff members had varying degrees of receptiveness to this general message, but it was useful to have met them, and it was a valuable experience for us at least as much as for them. (While sitting in the FCC's cafeteria, I thought "You feel more experienced. Welcome to experience level 5.")
I believe we're going to be doing a couple of ex parte notices for these meetings, so you may soon be able to search public records on-line for a list of our meetings and a copy of an outline of our arguments. The FCC has rules designed to let everyone interested in an issue know (in many cases) what kinds of non-public contacts have taken place concerning that issue between advocates of a particular position and FCC staff, and roughly what kinds of arguments were presented.
I couldn't overstate how grateful I was to have Cindy with me for all of our presentations.
