FCC Moves Cable Cases Back to Judge from Bureau
Reversing its Media Bureau, the FCC sent six program carriage complaints pitting independent cable channels against operators back to the judge who had been reviewing them (CD Dec 30 p2). The commissioners unanimously approved on Tuesday an order on their own motion giving back the administrative law judge’s authority over the case.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The order was approved with unusual speed, about an hour after it was circulated by the office of acting Chairman Michael Copps, FCC officials said.
The order asks Chief ALJ Richard Sippel to try to quickly resolve the cases and says the briefing schedule that he had set can be followed, commission officials said. Although Sippel had initially planned for a March hearing, that date may be pushed off, because more than a month has passed since the bureau’s first order on the matter, on Dec. 24, an official said. That order took the cases away from Sippel.
Spokesmen for complainants Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, the NFL and WealthTV didn’t reply by our deadline to messages seeking comment or had no comment right away. The defendants are Bright House Networks, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable. Spokespeople for Comcast and Cox declined to comment on the unpublished order, and officials at the other two cable operators didn’t reply right away to messages seeking comment.