Martin Wants Digital Must-Carry In ’09
All-Digital Systems Would Be Allowed To Cut Analog Feeds
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 4/15/2007 8:00:00 PM
Washington — Washington— Ahead of this week’s National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin is circulating a plan that would allow TV stations to demand both digital and analog carriage on cable systems beginning in early 2009, according to cable and FCC officials who asked not to be named.
In the same proposal, Martin would allow cable operators to drop the analog format if all subscribers had the necessary reception equipment to view local DTV signals.
Few cable operators are expected to have all-digital platforms in time to take advantage of the dual-carriage exemption.
| Must-Carry’s Back Story |
|---|
| How the squabble over mandatory TV-station carriage by cable has evolved: |
|
Source: Multichannel News research. |
| 1992: Congress includes must-carry options for broadcasters in 1992 Cable Act |
| 1997: U.S. Supreme Court upholds must-carry law |
| 1998: Federal Communications Commission begins digital must-carry rulemaking. |
| 2001: FCC rejects dual must-carry during DTV transition and multicast must-carry after it. Broadcasters seek reconsideration. |
| 2005: FCC affirms 2001 ruling, with chairman Kevin Martin (pictured) voting in minority to mandate multicast must-carry a month before becoming FCC chairman. |
| 2007: Martin seeks ruling that DTV stations can demand analog and digital carriage on cable systems after Feb. 17, 2009, analog shutoff. |
AIM: EVERY CABLE HOME
Martin’s intent is to ensure that local digital-TV stations that exercise their legal right of mandatory cable carriage can be seen in every cable home, not just in those with digital reception devices, such as set-top boxes and cable-ready TV sets. DTV stations that bargain their way onto cable are expected to be able protect their own interests.
“Instead of looking at it as imposing a new obligation on cable, I think the way to look at it is that it’s actually enforcing existing obligations,” said broadcast attorney Jonathan Blake, with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.
National Cable & Telecommunications Association vice president of communications Brian Dietz said a set-top-box solution in lieu of dual carriage was unacceptable, citing high costs. He added that an FCC rule that forced operators to rely on Cable Card-enabled boxes after July 1, 2007 would only add to the cost burden because those boxes are $72 to $90 more expensive than an integrated stalwart, such as the Motorola DCT-700.
“This plan appears to conclude that the digital-TV transition can be solved by disenfranchising millions of customers by forcing them to rent a set-top box they may not want, and it will in fact cost more because the [FCC] has refused to repeal its $600 million-per-year set-top-box tax that begins in July,” Dietz said in a statement.
NAB executive vice president of media relations Dennis Wharton gave the Martin plan a conditional thumbs-up. At various times, the NAB has strongly endorsed FCC-mandated dual carriage.
“Based on press accounts of this plan, this sounds like a very positive proposal. We look forward to learning more about the initiative,” Wharton said.
CUTOFF COMING IN 2009
Martin’s plan is part of the FCC’s preparation for the Feb. 17, 2009, cutoff of analog TV service across the nation.
Under current law, a TV station has the right to demand cable carriage for a single analog programming stream, although the vast majority of stations bargain for local cable distribution. After the transition, a station’s must-carry rights transfer to the digital signal.
Martin circulated the proposal — formally called a further notice of proposed rulemaking — on April 4, perhaps hoping for a vote at the FCC’s next public meeting April 25. An FCC official indicated that because the law protected TV signals from “material degradation,” cable systems won’t be allowed to reduce a must-carry station’s HD signal to standard digital definition to conserve bandwidth. In that case, a cable system could face a triple-cast requirement: once in analog, once in SD, and once in HD.
Without the kind of legal backing found in Martin’s proposal, a DTV station that elected must-carry after Feb. 17, 2009, would have to rely on the cable operator to be seen in homes with only analog equipment.
Those customers would gain access to the digital signal as they acquired the necessary reception equipment.
Last month, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said in House testimony that his company and others would voluntarily distribute local DTV signals in digital and analog to accommodate cable homes that collectively own 134 million analog TV sets not connected to digital boxes.
Cable officials have raised First Amendment objections to mandated dual carriage.
A voluntary approach would give operators enormous leverage over DTV must-carry stations: If the analog cutoff came today and not in 673 days, DTV stations without analog-carriage rights would lose access to 45% of cable homes. Cable could use that clout to promise analog carriage if a station didn’t demand carriage in HD, a format that eats up more bandwidth than standard-definition signals.
| NAB 2007 Snapshot |
|---|
| Location: Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nev. |
| Attendees: 105,000 (estimated) |
| Exhibitors: 1,500 (estimated) |
| Selected Speakers: National Association of Broadcasters CEO president David Rehr, NBC News anchor Tim Russert (pictured), radio personality Rick Dees, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.). |
MARTIN TO SKIP NAB
Martin discussed his concerns about cable carriage of DTV signals one year ago, at the NAB’s annual convention in Las Vegas. Although Martin was to address the same Las Vegas event April 18, he dropped out last Friday because of a scheduling conflict. Martin is to testify on Capitol Hill next Tuesday, FCC and broadcasting officials said.
Hardest hit by Martin’s plan would be small cable operators that don’t have the channel capacity to accommodate a dual-carriage requirement. It’s unclear whether Martin is considering an exemption for small operators. “I haven’t seen any favors coming from the FCC these days,” said Matt Polka, president of the American Cable Association, a trade group of small cable companies.
Under a failed Senate telecommunications bill last year, cable systems with less than 550 MHz of capacity would have been required to carry local digital must-carry signals in analog until 2014, with digital carriage only optional. But the same legislation would have imposed a five-year dual carriage requirement on large cable systems.
FCC HAS OBLIGATIONS
At last year’s NAB show, Martin spoke out for the first time on cable-carriage issues after the analog shutoff.
He said the FCC has a legal obligation to ensure that DTV signals are viewable in cable homes, citing section 614(b)(7) of the Communications Act, adopted in 1992. That provision states that local TV signals “shall be provided to every subscriber of a cable system. Such signals shall be viewable via cable on all television receivers of a subscriber that are connected to a cable system by a cable operator or for which a cable operator provides a connection.”
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