Henry Friendly was one of the great judges of the twentieth century; he served on the Second Circuit for twenty-seven years and earned a reputation as a deeply thoughtful jurist and scholar. He was particularly noted for his engagement with administrative law; his 1975 article, "Some Kind of Hearing," 123 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1267, is considered one of the all-time classics on the modern meaning of due process.
In 1962, Judge Friendly was invited to give the annual Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School, which he then published as a book with the title The Federal Administrative Agencies: The Need for Better Definition of Standards.. This is what he had to say about the FCC:
The job that Congress gave the Commission was somewhat comparable to asking the Board of the Metropolitan Opera Association to decide, after public hearing and with a reasoned opinion, whether the public convenience, interest, or necessity would be better served by having the prima donna role on opening night sung by . . . Tebaldi, Sutherland, or one of several winners of high American awards. Multiply this many hundred fold; add the seemingly capricious element that whoever was selected for the role could assign it to any of the other qualified applicants; prohibit the board from getting the advice of many best able to help; assume further that the decision-makers know their action is likely to please or displease persons responsible for their continuance in office, who occassionally communicate attitudes while the decision is in progress . . . .
To this apt characterization, written over forty years ago, I can add only that the "board" of Judge Friendly's metaphor now seeks to regulate karaoke bars as "opera-enabled services" and to ban the use of "indecent" musical intervals such as the tritone.