Groups Want FCC Commissioners Focused on Boosting Minority Ownership

Fifty organizations, most representing minority constituencies, have asked the White House to nominate two new Federal Communications Commission commissioners - including a replacement chairman - who will make minority and female participation in media a priority. They did not suggest any candidate by name.

In a letter to President Barack Obama, the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council, the NAACP, the Benton Foundation and a veritable host of others put in a plug for a laundry list of proposals, some pending for more than a decade. "In the next three years, FCC will be called upon to modernize our telephone systems, rationalize our spectrum policy, and achieve your administration's goals of universal broadband access, adoption and informed use," they wrote. "As part of the unprecedented transformation of our economy from the industrial to the digital age, it is imperative that the FCC has leaders firmly committed to delivering first class digital citizenship to all Americans, including historically marginalized populations."