Michael J Copps

His dark suits. His wing-tipped shoes. The nearly four decades he's toiled in the nation's capital, including the last six years on the Federal Communications Commission. Everything about Michael J. Copps screams bureaucrat -- until he opens his mouth. Copps, a Democrat whose crusade against media consolidation has helped make him Hollywood's public-policy enemy No. 1, is more proselytizer than pencil pusher. The public airwaves, he says, are filled with "too much baloney passed off as news."

Two days before the nation's television stations switch off their analog signals, the acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission visited Los Angeles to warn that too many Southern California residents still weren't ready for the change Friday to all-digital TV broadcasts. Michael J. Copps said he feared that as many as 20% of households in major U.S. cities still rely on over-the-air analog broadcasts.