Courts

Laws or regulations that would require a la carte sale of cable networks would probably lead to programmers’ economic ruin, lawyers for Court TV and A&E Television Networks said a recent letter to dozens of House members.

The vast majority of cable networks are currently sold in large packages, but that business model has come under attack by some in Congress who say it leads to higher rates and the commingling of family-friendly programming with indecent content that is inappropriate for children.

The cable industry took the first step Tuesday toward asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a ruling that exposed cable high-speed-data providers to mandatory carriage of competing Internet-service providers.

In a widely expected move, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco to stay its cable-modem classification ruling while the cable industry pursued an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Paxson Communications Corp., one of the largest TV-station owners in the country, is asking a federal court to require the Federal Communications Commission to quickly issue rules that would spell out cable-carriage rights of digital-TV stations.

Paxson filed a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last Friday, claiming the FCC had allowed the issue to linger for more than six years. Paxson urged the court to give the FCC just 30 days from the date of its order to issue new rules.

In a victory for local regulators, a Federal Appeals Court panel in Chicago ruled Friday that cable-modem litigation between the city of Chicago, Comcast Corp. and other cable companies belongs in state court as a contract dispute.

The decision reversed a decision by a lower federal court in September 2003 that the case belonged in federal court and that Chicago was barred from collecting cable-modem franchise fees.