Kenneth Allen Cox was born in December 1916 in Topeka, Kansas and graduated from High School in 1934 in Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of Washington and received a bachelor's degree in law from the University of Michigan. In 1941 he began working as a law clerk for Justice William J. Steinert of the Washington Supreme Court, and later worked for the State Attorney General as a lawyer on the staff of the State Tax Commission.
When World War II broke out, Cox's legal career was interrupted to enlist in the Army in 1943. In that same year, he married Nona Fumerton of Seattle and ultimately had three sons. After the war, he returned to the University of Michigan as an assistant professor in the law school. He resigned in 1948 to join the Seattle firm of Little, LeSourd, Palmer, Scott, and Siemmons and later became a partner in 1953. The firm engaged in general law practice in state and federal courts and with administrative agencies, specializing in tax and anti-trust matters. In 1951, Cox was recalled to duty by the Army to serve as a member of the staff of the Army General School at Fort Riley, Kansas. After that tour of duty, he rejoined his law firm in 1952.
In 1955, he was named special counsel for the Senate Commerce Committee and, in that capacity, he helped direct that committee's television inquiry of 1956-1957. He resumed his Seattle law practice in April 1957, but returned to Washington, D.C. for brief periods in 1958, 1959, and in 1960 to conduct additional hearings for the Senate Committee. In April of 1961, the Federal Communications Commission named him Chief of its Broadcast Bureau, and in 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed Cox FCC Commissioner.
Most commission observers, regardless of their opinion of his regulatory philosophy, generally agree that Cox was an uncommonly able Commissioner. Chairman Dean Burch, President Richard Nixon's choice to lead the Commission, called Cox, “A worthy and noble advocate of his position on the Commission. Although we disagreed frequently, it was not because of a lack of scholarship or candor.”
As a Commissioner, Cox was animated by a liberalism grounded in his faith in the capacity and obligation of government to raise the public-interest quality of programming, by a “mom and pop” attitude toward broadcast ownership, and by a persistent skepticism of the willingness of broadcasters to operate in the public interest without close supervision. Cox said:
I don't think the profit motive provides an incentive for the kind of programming the public needs. So long as they get an audience for what they do, broadcasters will do it, without regard to the needs of significant elements of the population that are not being served.
It was this attitude that propelled him, in 1962, when he was still chief of the Broadcast Bureau, into the center of a major controversy. Acting on authority of the Commission, Cox instructed his staff to question renewal applicants whose proposed local live programming in prime time appeared to be inadequate. To many broadcasters receiving the letters, the staff's questioning suggested that the inclusion of a proposal for sustained local-live programming in prime time would speed Commission action on their renewal applications.
Commissioner Cox was a strong supporter of the Commission's proposal to loosen the network's grip on prime-time programming, believing that the new rules would help stimulate new sources of programming. Cox also believed a multitude of editorial voices enabled the country's democratic system to function best, and strongly supported breaking up multimedia holdings in the same communities.
From March 1964 to November 1967, Cox served as Chairman of the Commission's Advisory Committee for Land Mobile Radio Services, and was a member of its Telephone and Telegraph Committees. On September 1, 1970, Cox retired from the FCC after his seven-year term.
Upon retiring, Cox joined Microwave Communications of America, Inc. (MCI) as a senior vice-president, and worked in association as counsel with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Haley, Bader, and Potts. Cox was also member of the National Advertising Review Board and a director of the National Public Radio Network. Columbia University selected him for the Alfred I. duPont Award in broadcast journalism in 1970.
