Though FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters recently he’s in no hurry to leave his post, we could see a three-member FCC for a time, depending on how long it takes President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team to identify a new chairman.
Assuming Republican Commissioner Deborah Tate leaves because her term is up and that Martin leaves after the inauguration, there could be a 2–1 FCC for a while, with one of the Democrats, either Michael Copps or Jonathan Adelstein, named as interim chairman and Robert McDowell as the lone GOP member on the eighth floor.
Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman under President Clinton, is a member of the transition team’s agency review group, though under the area of international trade and economics.
Names that have surfaced as possibilities for chairman include Julius Genachowski and Don Gips, former FCC staffers under President Bill Clinton.
BusinessWeek carried a story mulling the search for a chairman.
