Public-TV Accord Could Be Reworked
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 9/23/2007 8:00:00 PM
Washington — A two-year-old digital-television carriage agreement signed by large cable companies and public TV stations can be revised to reflect major changes in technology and regulation, a person familiar with the deal said last week.
But changing the agreement won’t be easy. Cable and the public broadcasters would need to enter mediation if a new voluntary deal couldn’t be reached, and both would need their members to ratify the mediator’s ruling, the person said.
The 10-year agreement, unveiled in February 2005, was hammered out by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Association of Public Television Stations, and the Public Broadcasting Service.
The stability of the agreement could be at risk going forward because a key provision directly conflicts with new digital-TV carriage rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission on Sept. 11.
The FCC is requiring cable operators to provide customers with analog and digital versions of a public station’s signal after Feb. 17, 2009, the date when all full-power TV stations must shut down their analog service and rely exclusively on the digital format.
Under the cable-public TV station deal, no analog cable carriage is required after the transition. Public TV evidently swapped analog carriage rights for guaranteed cable carriage of up to four digital services per station, with some limitations.
It’s possible some public-TV leaders might want to look at whether they can get out of the cable deal if they think the FCC rules offer better terms.
So far, there has been no public pressure from Capitol Hill Democrats to convince public-TV leaders to rethink the cable deal.
The new FCC regulations, which sunset in 2012 if not extended, apply only to TV stations that demand cable carriage under so-called must-carry rules. The nation’s 386 public stations have must-carry rights; they can’t demand or accept compensation from pay TV providers.
Only cable operators that have converted to all-digital platforms are automatically exempt from the FCC’s dual-carriage requirement. The scope of the exemption is expected to be narrow because very few cable operators will have ceased analog operation by early 2009.
The cable-public TV agreement’s clash with new FCC rules couldn’t have been deliberate, because neither side knew the agency would impose de facto dual carriage two years later.
In fact, just days after the agreement was announced, the FCC voted for the second time in four years to reject dual carriage, largely due to First Amendment objections raised by cable.
The FCC has not released the text of the new regulations, which largely reflect NCTA’s compromise proposal offered in the weeks leading up to the agency’s vote.
When lobbying the FCC in recent weeks, the cable industry said its three-year dual carriage commitment did not include public stations.
“It was mentioned, but it did not seem a front-and-center concern,” FCC member Robert McDowell, a Republican, said last Monday.
NCTA and APTS wouldn’t comment on whether either one would move to modify the agreement in light of the FCC’s new policies.
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