Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday that he wants to give class-A low-power-TV stations a chance to gain full-power status and all of the rights and responsibilities that entails. Among the responsibilities would be complying with minimum children's-programming requirements and other public-interest obligations. One of the key rights would be that cable operators would be required to carry them under the must-carry rules. The FCC would judge station requests for full-power status on a case-by-case basis, and only if FCC engineers determined that they could serve their communities of license without interfering with others. Chairman Martin said the proposal was an effort to boost diversity of voices, noting that almost one-third of the 500-plus class-A LPTVs are Spanish-language and saying, "I think this is something that will be very critical to some of those Spanish-language broadcasters throughout the country." The FCC estimated that 236 are low-power Spanish-language stations. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association called the plan unnecessary and illegal. The NCTA said Congress granted must-carry rights to LPTVs only in limited circumstances, adding, "Requiring cable operators to carry hundreds of class-A low-power stations would violate the Constitution and Congress' intent while jeopardizing the wide diversity of programming that is already available on cable systems nationwide."
