Draft FCC Order Lets Hybrid Systems Distribute Only Must-Carry Stations in HD, With DTAs
The FCC would scale back viewability rules so most cable systems can distribute TV stations guaranteed carriage in HD format only, and not also in standard definition if cheap set-top boxes are offered, agency and industry officials said. A draft Media Bureau order circulated this week and awaiting votes from commissioners allows hybrid digital/analog systems to stop carrying must-carry stations in both formats in about six months, commission officials said Thursday. The order circulated Tuesday, exactly three weeks before the June 12 expiration of the last three-year extension of viewability rules..
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Operators won’t need to meet what the cable industry calls a dual-carriage requirement, if hybrid systems offer video subscribers the ability to buy a free or a reduced-cost device like a digital tuning adapter, FCC officials said. Small cable systems would keep an exemption from such a dual-carriage mandate, agency and industry officials said. They said hybrid systems with less than 553 MHz of capacity or fewer than 2,501 subscribers could continue only distributing must-carry stations in SD and not also have to carry them in HD. The NAB had been lobbying the FCC to require small systems to carry in both formats stations guaranteed carriage when the systems carried anything in HD, which the American Cable Association had opposed (CD April 30 p9). A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment on the draft.
The NAB made a new viewability proposal Wednesday that some in the cable industry said could be called a concession of sorts. The association has said the current viewability rule should be kept and not sunset June 12. An “additional compliance option” would allow operators to comply with the viewability law by providing “free equipment that enables access to digital broadcast signals for a period of three years,” the NAB’s new filing said. “Such a rule, which incorporates proposals made on the record by the cable industry, would afford operators additional flexibility without controverting the plain language or intent of Section 614(b)(7)” of the Communications Act, it continued in docket 98-120 (http://xrl.us/bm9azc).
"We want to talk to the commission,” NAB General Counsel Jane Mago said of the forthcoming order. “We want to make sure we make this work for consumers.” NCTA had said the eight largest U.S. operators are committed to giving customers cheap digital converters so they can get all must-carry stations on older TV sets that can only receive analog signals (CD May 21 p11). An NCTA spokesman declined to comment.
Those “voluntary commitments” aren’t enough for the NAB, it said. “We do not believe that the statements of the cable operators alone address the requirement of the statute. ... With some modifications, the voluntary commitments discussed by cable operators could form the basis for another option for compliance with the statutory viewability mandate.” Hybrid systems already “can go ‘all-digital’ or they can provide analog access to their subscribers,” the association said. “However, NAB would not oppose providing cable operators with some additional flexibility.”
Hybrid systems that wanted to stop simultaneous HD and SD carriage wouldn’t be able to cease it altogether right away under the draft, commission officials said. They'd have a period of time lasting for most of this year in which to transition from carrying must-carry stations in both formats to HD only, the officials said. Cable operators are continuing their gradual progression toward digital-only systems, and our survey of them found few have eliminated analog channels entirely and most deliver channels in both formats (CD April 22 p8). NCTA had said the top eight operators agreed to tell subscribers at least a month before a TV station wouldn’t be carried in analog anymore. Those companies have more than 70 percent of analog cable subscribers.
"Cable operators will continue to make must carry signals viewable to analog cable customers if the FCC sunsets the ‘dual carriage’ requirement,” the NCTA reported executives told aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell. The agency should “allow the ‘viewability rule’ to expire as intended,” the ex parte filing in the docket said (http://xrl.us/bm9a4f). “Cable customers will not be harmed if the rule expires at the end of the three year period.” Subscribers to hybrid systems with analog sets “need only to lease a digital set-top box,” the association said: “Those boxes are readily available” and “cable operators commonly offer them to analog customers at low cost.”