An Indirect Path to Mandate

AN INDIRECT PATH TO MANDATE
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
Senate telecommunications legislation would “indirectly” provide the Federal Communications Commission with a new opportunity to impose broad digital broadcast-TV carriage requirements on cable operators, according to Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) who sponsored the sweeping telecommunications bill (S. 2686, H.R. 5252) that passed his committee on June 28. He included new language that addressed cable carriage of digital TV stations that demand access without compensation, also called must-carry. The new language states that cable operators have to carry “any digital video signal requiring carriage;” existing law requires carriage of a TV station’s “primary video.” The change has potential importance because the FCC has twice determined that the phrase “primary video” meant mandatory cable carriage of one programming service per station. Broadcasters are hopeful the FCC could be persuaded to read “any digital signal” more broadly than it did “primary video.” Asked if the addition of the words “any digital video signal” was aimed at imposing must-carry on cable, Sen Stevens indicated that was his intention. “I don't think it does directly. But indirectly it does,” Sen Stevens said June 28. “Indirectly, it does, yes.”
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6350826.html