August 28, 1998

                                                            
 STUART B. BEDELL, ASSISTANT CHIEF, AUDIO SERVICES DIVISION, TO RETIRE

       Stuart B. Bedell, Assistant Chief, Audio Services Division, Mass Media Bureau, will
retire on September 3, 1998, after 30 years of distinguished government service.  His
entire career has been dedicated to broadcast regulation in the Commission's Mass
Media Bureau, and its predecessor, the Broadcast Bureau.

       Bedell began his career at the Commission as an attorney-advisor in the Aural
New and Changed Facilities Division of the Broadcast Bureau.  In December 1979, he was
selected as the Chief of the Bureau's Transfer Branch in the Renewal and Transfer Division,
and was responsible for the Commission's regulation of the sale of AM, FM and television
stations.  

       In November 1982, when the Broadcast Bureau was reorganized into the Mass Media
Bureau, Bedell was appointed Chief of the Distribution Services Branch, in the Video
Services Division, where he was responsible for rulemaking proceedings and service
authorizations for the Direct Broadcast Satellite Service and the ITFS and MMDS services.

     He was appointed to his present position as Assistant Chief of the Audio
Services Division in 1990.  Bedell has been instrumental in implementing the
Commission's radio ownership rule revisions, including the relaxed local radio ownership
rules mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and in acting on the voluminous
number of radio transactions that resulted from those ownership rule revisions.  

     He plans to remain in the Washington, DC, area and to pursue a wide
variety of educational and recreational activities.  


                                   -FCC-