Unfortunately, his Carter=era successor (Charlie Ferris, who was Tip
O'Neill's bag carrier) brought in the economists and "policy" types,
downplayed the engineers, and the succeeding chairmen were even worse.


ONe example of this was AM stereo. Instead of picking one of
5 or so proposed systems as the standard, they said "let the
marketplace decide". With 5 possible selections, the net result
was that AM stereo was stillborn.

When stereo sound for TV was proposed, the EIA (electronics
industry association) got together and hammered out just
one proposal to submit to the FCC. And the FCC said
"okay, you can do it". The EIA did essentially what
the FCC should have done, but with the AM stereo disaster,
the EIA knew that the only way the FCC couldn't screw it
up was to present only one proposal. SO that's what was done.