The FCC shouldn’t change program access rules

reduction in vertical integration between cable operators and video programmers, program access regulation should be curtailed, not expanded.” The commission should not take up an American Cable Association proposal to increase the rights of buying groups such as the National Cable Television Cooperative, because NCTC is able to negotiate agreements under the existing rules, said NBCUniversal. “While ACA may want NCTC to have increased leverage in programming negotiations, there is no evidence of a problem that warrants such regulatory action.” NBCUniversal also asked the commission to reject the ACA’s proposed 3 million-subscriber “safe harbor” for forming buying groups. Multichannel video programming distributors with 3 million subscribers “or even half that number” have “routinely negotiated independently from buying groups, and they have proved themselves to be perfectly capable of negotiating successfully on their own,” said the filing. If the FCC adopts new buying group rules, cable providers could use the First Amendment to attack the changes in court, the filing said. “First Amendment considerations also counsel against expanding the government’s role in supervising relationships between cable programmers and cable operators, and weakening the ability of programmers to manage rationally the business relations and economics that enable the creation of news and entertainment programming.”