Where's the Beef?

Daniel Schorr has a nice editorial on CSM regarding his experiences with market deregulation. It doesn't go into great depth or have a whole lot of evidence, but it highlights many cases where deregulation failed to live up to its promises. It's a topic we seem to discuss regularly, and perhaps one that would be interesting to study. What are the market conditions that determine whether an industry is best controlled by the public vs the private sector? What methods of deregulation are most likely to result in an improvement in value for consumers?