House Committee Asks FCC To Investigate Reassignment of PEG Channels

The House Appropriations Financial Services and General Services Subcommittee this week asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the treatment of public, educational and government channels by both incumbent and new providers -- especially AT&T. The subcommittee members are concerned about incumbent operators who are digitizing and moving PEG channels from the lowest numbered channels to slots as high as Ch. 999. The legislators also want the FCC to examine AT&T U-verse's PEG application. PEG supporters assert the application is cumbersome, for it aggregates all PEG channels in a region onto one menu that a consumer must search. Further, the content stream does not match the quality of commercial channels. Features such as second audio programming, closed captioning and other features can't be used when viewing AT&T's PEG application.