Lawyers for the American Cable Association urged FCC officials to...
Lawyers for the American Cable Association urged FCC officials to change the program access rules so program buying groups such as the National Cable TV Cooperative (NCTC) are given the same protections that individual pay-TV distributors enjoy under the rules,…
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ex parte notices show (http://xrl.us/bnja9v, http://xrl.us/bnja9x). They argued that the current definitions under FCC rules of a “buying group” are too restrictive and should be expanded. And they argued that MVPDs that buy most of their programming through buying groups should be excluded from master agreements the group reaches with cable-affiliated programmers. They also pushed for prohibition on cable-affiliated programmers from charging above-market rates for their networks. “Under the [ACA’s] proposed policy, if an MVPD files a complaint, the Commission compares the contract that the complaining firm is being offered not only to the contracts that the programmer offers to other MVPDs ... but also to the contracts that other programmers the same MVPD and other MVPDs for similar programming,” it said.