FCC Regulation is About as Important as Buggy Whip Regulation

Ed Morrissey makes a good point about the FCC:

Why do we need the FCC in the 21st century? Most television channels are narrowcasters, using satellites and cable channels that don’t eat up limited broadcast space in local markets. The phone system in the US is no longer monopolized, and the issues of access and competition in those areas could be handled by state public-utility commissions, as they are now. The licensing of broadcast stations could be handled by the Commerce Department, or by a greatly-reduced FCC with binding limitations on jurisdiction.

We have managed to free ourselves from the encumbrances of monopolization over the last thirty years. This country doesn’t need a bloated bureaucracy getting in the way of innovation and commerce. It needs government to acknowledge that its communications-regulation apparatus is archaic and in need of downsizing, rather than attempting to nationalize the media.

The FCC is a classic example of a federal agency which has limited relevance in the modern world but is desperately trying to cling to power by grabbing authority over issues where it's clearly not needed or constitutionally authorized.  It, like the Education Department, Labor Department and Commerce Department, not to mention the NEA, can all go and nobody would notice...except the thousands of federal workers who would have only slightly less to do each day.