NOTE: The following op-ed originally appeared in the October 16, 2003, edition of The Indianapolis Star.

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If the Federal Communications Commission were a baseball team, it would make the Detroit Tigers look like World Series contenders. The FCC could make the Cubs and Red Sox look like dynasties. We can laugh at the inept Tigers, and the Cubs and Red Sox have been loveable losers for decades. For the FCC, however, this is no laughing matter, and nobody seems to love them.

Consider the futility evidenced in these recent losing efforts: "The FCC has dismissed indecency complaints resulting from the Golden Globes live broadcast last winter in which performer Bono dropped a particular f-bomb on the air. According to the FCC, this particular word does not violate indecency standards because it was used as an "expletive to emphasize an exclamation."

It took the FCC 14 months to figure out that radio stations airing the now infamous Opie and Anthony play-by-play broadcast of a couple allegedly having sex in a New York City cathedral should be fined. The five FCC commissioners couldn't even get on the same page over this egregious stunt. Michael Copps dissented because he wanted the stations' licenses revoked. Notice to the other four commissioners: Listen to Copps if you are serious about indecency enforcement.

The FCC's new regulations to allow big media corporations to become even bigger are now blocked in federal court. The regulations are so poorly designed that even Congress is into the game with pending legislative attempts to roll back the higher FCC ownership caps. Now, in an act of incredible irony, the FCC has announced a series of public hearings around the country to get public input on how to -- get this -- strengthen localism. Here's an idea: Don't let mega-media giants buy up all the locally owned radio and TV stations.

Ever wanting to serve the public and in an apparent snub to the court system, the FCC vowed to enforce the do-not-call telemarketing registry once a federal court said the Federal Trade Commission could not enforce the ban. But the FCC's bad luck continued when an appeals court later ruled the FTC could, indeed, enforce the registry, pretty much putting the FCC back in the bullpen.

Thanks to the FCC, radio shocker Howard Stern can now be considered a newscaster. That's right, Stern can join the likes of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. The FCC ruled before the California recall election that Stern could interview Arnold Schwarzenegger on the air without triggering federal equal-time requirements for candidates. The reason? The FCC decided that Stern's program is classified as a news program, and thus is exempt from equal-time regulations.

And the hitless streak just goes on for the FCC. The initiative to promote local broadcast diversity with low-power FM stations has foundered. Sensible children's programming on TV can scarcely be found. The advisory icons at the beginning of television programs are understood by virtually nobody. The content of over-the-air, primetime television pushes the edges more each year, and cable is even worse. Yet the FCC looks the other way for over-the-air TV and won't even touch cable.

As one observes the FCC's recent work, the words of the immortal Casey Stengel come to mind. As Casey watched his woeful Mets of the early 1960s lose again, he uttered the legendary question, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

The FCC still seems to efficiently manage the broadcast industry's technical standards, but in terms of content and ownership policy, the commission is perplexed and increasingly irrelevant. The FCC needs to be more than just a traffic cop.

In the 1920s, when the emerging broadcast industry was ineffectively run by the Department of Commerce, Secretary Herbert Hoover called a series of workshops to find a way to manage broadcasting. Various thinkers, educators and engineers came together under Hoover's guidance and pounded out a philosophy of regulation that led eventually to the FCC and the Communications Act of 1934.

That work served the country well enough for decades, but it's clear now that the regulation of electronic mass media needs a broad-based reinvention. It's time for FCC Chairman Michael Powell to step up to the plate and lead that reinvention.

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McCall is professor of communication arts and sciences at DePauw University in Greencastle.