NCTA Backs 3-Year Limit
Pushed as Alternative to Martin’s Dual Must-Carry Scheme
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 9/9/2007 8:00:00 PM
Washington — With olive branch in hand, cable is offering to distribute so-called must-carry local TV stations in both analog and digital formats for three years following the legally mandated cutoff of analog TV in early 2009, cable officials familiar with the plan said last week.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is backing the idea as an alternative to FCC chairman Kevin Martin’s proposal to impose perpetual dual must-carry until cable systems have gone all-digital, an expensive undertaking considered to take many years to complete.
NCTA officials floated their proposal in a series of meetings with top FCC officials last Wednesday, hoping to spur debate on a compromise measure before voting on Martin’s plan at the Sept. 11 public meeting.
“[Martin’s] proposal as it stands is a ticket to court,” a cable-industry source said, referring to the industry’s firm belief that government-required philanthropy for TV stations is unconstitutional.
At the same meeting, the FCC is scheduled to vote on cable program-access rules, in particular the extension of the rule that bans cable operators from withholding affiliated satellite-delivered programming from DirecTV, EchoStar Communications and other cable companies.
The agency was intending to vote to include incumbent cable operators within rules adopted last December that give local franchising authorities 90 days to act on cable-service applications filed by phone companies and other entities with pre-existing authority to occupy local rights of way. But early last Friday afternoon, Martin pulled the franchise order from the agenda.
Must-carry refers to the Supreme Court-upheld right of every full-power TV station to demand cable carriage without paying or receiving money. Public TV stations have only must-carry rights, while commercial stations may demand cash or seek other forms of compensation from cable operators in lieu of automatic carriage.
Several hundred commercial stations elect must-carry, but these local broadcasters tend to be weak and lightly viewed independents that air nationally syndicated reruns, Christian ministers or Spanish programming.
The NCTA indicated that the three-year pledge wouldn’t be universal among all cable systems. The cable trade group noted in a Sept. 5 FCC filing that “bandwidth-constrained operators” in large markets with numerous must-carry stations and public-access channels might need relief from a rigid dual-carriage regime.
The NCTA’s lobbyists have asked to exempt all systems of 550 Megahertz capacity or less or any system with 5,000 subscribers or fewer.
Small cable operators, led by their Pittsburgh, Pa.-based lobby group, the American Cable Association, want more generous terms than they would receive under the NCTA’s plan.
ACA president Matt Polka said in an interview last Friday that the exemption should include all systems of 552 MHz and smaller or any system with 15,000 subscribers or fewer.
In meetings with the FCC, Polka said the agency needed to decide the exemption issue quickly.
“I said: 'You have to do this now, not later. Another rulemaking isn’t going to do us any good,’ ” Polka said.
The National Association of Broadcasters is backing Martin in a major political battle with cable on an issue that has lingered at the agency for many years. The FCC has twice rejected additional local TV-station carriage mandates on cable. In February 2005, Martin himself voted to reject dual must-carry.
But Martin and broadcasters have tried to purge from the debate the notion that dual carriage is being imposed by the FCC. Instead, they insist that dual carriage is a voluntary option because, cable can supply everyone with a digital set-top box. NCTA has said that the box approach isn’t an option at all, because it involves forcing consumers to attach boxes to 126 million analog TVs at a cost of $6.3 billion, assuming costs of $50 per box.
NAB executive vice president of media relations Dennis Wharton said the NCTA plan “sounds intriguing, but NAB would like to read more about the details.”
Martin has also proposed that cable pass through “all bits” transmitted by local TV stations, a rule which would ban the use of signal compression and statistical multiplexing as capacity-saving tools. In the FCC meetings, the NCTA repeated its firm opposition to the “all bits” mandate because its impact on cable’s ability to husband bandwidth.
Martin’s dual-carriage proposal is intended to ensure that millions of analog cable homes don’t lose access to local TV signals that, by law, will be transmitted only in digital after Feb. 17, 2009.
The NAB sent Martin a letter last Thursday reiterating firm support for a dual-carriage regime, claiming cable has a legal responsibility to ensure that must-carry signals are “viewable” in cable homes.
In FCC filings, NCTA and Comcast have explained that cable systems would be complying with the “viewable” standard in federal law by carrying the signals in digital and by informing subscribers that leasing a digital set-top would make the signals appear on analog TV sets.
In its letter, the NAB said cable was not being straight with consumers in public-service announcements that say analog TVs connected to cable won’t be affected by the transition. The NAB indicated that the PSAs should note that without dual must-carry, analog TVs connected to cable will require a digital set-top to display all local TV signals.
“It is sadly ironic that cable is voluntarily educating consumers about the broadcast digital TV transition, yet the National Association of Broadcasters is spending their time trying to force mandates on cable systems that the FCC has already rejected twice as unconstitutional. Rather than imposing unnecessary regulatory mandates on others, perhaps their time could be better spent preparing themselves and their customers for the digital transition,” NCTA vice president of communications Brian Dietz said.
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