The dynamics of the Senate Commerce Committee will change in 2005 with the departure of Sen. Fritz Hollings, the top Democrat on the committee and a nemesis of FCC Chairman Michael Powell.
Hollings, who represented South Carolina in the Senate since 1966, said he plans to retire at the end of his seventh term in January 2005 and will not seek re-election next year.
Hollings has been a vocal opponent of media consolidation and is a sponsor of legislation to roll back the nationwide TV audience cap to 35 percent.
In addition, he has made haranguing Powell a fixture of committee hearings and statements to the press on the FCC failure, as Hollings sees it, to do its job of regulating broadcasters. He has decried Powell as a "Las Vegas croupier" for some of the FCC's policies to allow wheeling and dealing in spectrum licenses, and he has accused the FCC of being in the pockets of powerful media companies and scornful of the principles of localism and public interest.
NAB President and CEO Eddie Fritts said he was "saddened" to hear of Hollings's retirement plans. "Fritz Hollings is a Capitol Hill legend, with unquestioned integrity and a fierce independence that has served his country and his South Carolina constituents exceedingly well," Fritts said in a prepared statement. "He's been a friend to free, local broadcasting for 35 years."
Hollings, 81, was elected to the South Carolina House of House of Representatives when he was 26. He became the state's youngest ever governor at the age of 36 in 1958.
He also holds the distinction of being a state's junior senator longer than anyone ever, a status he held from 1966 until the 2001 retirement of Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond.
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