Tom Whitehead - Ave Atque Vale

Clay T. (Tom) Whitehead died in July. He was head of the Office of Telecommunications policy during the Nixon Administration, and a strong advocate of introducing market forces into the moribund broadcasting business. His WaPo obituary says:

His work had an enormous impact on the cable industry, which because of his efforts could get its own programming channels via satellites to a national audience. Before, that reach was impossible unless a cable channel wanted to lease land lines from the monopoly provider AT&T.

HBO, the Turner cable networks and C-Span were among the key beneficiaries of Dr. Whitehead's decisions.

He thought that TV broadcasters should pay for spectrum rather than receive it for free, or as a quid pro quo for political contributions, and he could fairly claim to be the catalyst for the auction system that was adopted later on. (Though never for TV.) The WaPo somehow missed that one. He also told me one time that he thought this threat to charge for spectrum use was a significant factor in the media' companies' hostility to Nixon.