FCC POSTPONES PLANNED VOTES ON DTV RULES FOR CABLE AND DBS
At last min., FCC once again delayed votes on 3 digital TV items scheduled for consideration at its open meeting Thurs. Commission, which first postponed action on DTV issues last month, didn’t indicate reason for latest delay. But, in his swan song meeting at Commission, FCC Chmn. Kennard pledged that agency would act on all 3 items no later than Jan. 17, just before he’s expected to step down from his post in favor of Republican successor (see separate story, this issue).
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Well-placed sources said FCC’s latest delay was due not to problems with proposed DTV rules, but to agency’s prolonged review of AOL’s pending purchase of Time Warner (TW). They said staffers and commissioners working on DTV issues simply ran out of time to make meeting deadline because they also were busy trying to craft compromise on AOL-TW approval. With thorny AOL-TW merger having top priority at agency and still not settled by our deadline, sources said, action on DTV proposals had to be postponed. “The merger comes first,” one source said.
As reported earlier this week, sources said they still expected FCC to approve bid by new DTV-only station in Stuart, Fla., to gain cable must-carry status. They also believed that agency may require consumer electronics manufacturers to place digital tuners in all new TV sets by a date certain and decide extent to which cable operators and DBS providers must carry more than broadcaster’s primary digital video signal. Commission reportedly also may consider study of cable systems’ capacity to carry both analog and digital broadcasting signals and their plans to boost channel capacity. Finally, agency may open new inquiry to determine what broadcasters intend to do with their new digital channels.
But outcome remained unclear at our deadline, with sources still expecting Commission to punt on core issue of whether cable operators and DBS providers should carry broadcasters’ analog and digital signals during current DTV transition. Besides dual must- carry issue, FCC sources said agency had “host of technical and legal issues” to settle concerning DTV carriage by cable and satellite operators, including channel positioning of DTV stations, tier placement of digital service, material signal degradation limits, DTV carriage by smaller cable systems, rate regulation, retransmission-consent rights.
Other knowledgeable sources said Kennard might propose extending DTV transition deadline 2 years to 2008 to allow broadcasters more time to complete their switchover to digital- only signals. In return, they said, govt. would eliminate 85% market penetration standard for stations to make full conversion. Commission also still was considering separate proposed rulemaking that would place interactive TV restrictions on all cable operators. But sources said all proposed rules remained in flux because of Kennard’s tight deadline for departing Commission. “This has been a strange time,” said one.