FCC’s Martin Justifies Positions to Cablecos

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin opened NCTA’s The Cable Show on Monday with the words: “It’s certainly a pleasure to be here. Actually, it’s a little more than that, it’s a surprise.”

Martin was referring to the fact that cable companies have recently been at odds with many of his views, including his positions on a la carte programming, the rules for broadcast TV’s transition to digital and changing video franchise requirements.

The chairman last month in House testimony said he’s behind the idea of requiring cablecos to offer programming on an a la carte basis and in smaller packages so subscribers aren’t forced to buy large program bundles. The idea of a la carte programming has been an industry hot potato and cablecos have been clear in their strong opposition to the idea of legislation that would require them to unbundled program packages.

Justifying his position on this issue, Martin drew an analogy between a la carte and the discussion on the TV industry’s transition to digital. In the latter case, Martin said he wanted the FCC to encourage broadcasters to multicast because offering more free channels would give consumers an incentive to get a conversion box or digital TV set. “The broadcasters said they could not sustain a business based on advertiser-supported multicast channels unless they knew the channels would be carried on the cable and satellite systems,” said Martin. “Your industry opposed mandatory carriage, saying that consumers should be able to pick and choose the channels they want, not having programming forced upon them. But if that’s really your belief, then it should hold true whether we are talking about broadcast channels or your own cable programming channels. You can’t have it both ways.”

Whatever the position, Martin said he always lets the interests of enabling new competition to benefit consumers be his guide.

“Recently I supported Time Warner’s petition for a declaratory ruling regarding their interconnection rights which were affecting their ability to offer competitive phone services,” said Martin. He said he also circulated an order addressing a petition by Cox Communications Inc. to allow the cableco to reach MDU dwellers to offer competitive phone services.

The cablecos’ move into voice services benefits consumers by giving them more choices, Martin said, adding that he’ll continue to support that.

And although Martin said he sometimes comes down on the opposite side from the cablecos, he said many of his positions over the years have benefited this industry. At his early days on the FCC, Martin said he refrained from regulating broadband services, agreed that the cablecos shouldn’t have to open their networks to competitors at wholesale rates, refrained from taxing broadband services, supported exempting cablecos from franchise fees and agreed that broadband should not fall under the universal service regime.

FCC www.fcc.gov

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