TV & VIDEO - Feb. 16, 1987

The Federal Communications Commission moved to bolster the private property rights of television program producers Thursday with decisions endorsing scrambled satellite-TV signals, protecting exclusive agreements between TV broadcasters and program suppliers and launching an inquiry into the way cable systems pay royalties to retransmit syndicated TV programming. The commission’s actions included adopting a report that found scrambling satellite television signals is in the public interest, protects programmers from theft of their services and provides an incentive for them to produce more programs.