Debate Over Cable TV Moving to Southland : Entertainment: An FCC hearing opens in L.A. next week. It is expected to cover a wide range of issues affecting the industry’s future.

An unusual Federal Communications Commission field hearing in Los Angeles next week will open a new round in the increasingly fierce debate over the cable television industry’s future.

In its first field session since the late 1970s, the commission is scheduled to hear testimony from representatives of cable companies, movie studios, Southern California municipalities and others in a daylong session at Los Angeles City Hall next Monday.

Initially, the hearing was supposed to focus on how deregulation in the 1980s affected the supply of TV programming. But cable-TV insiders now say the session is likely to touch on a wide range of volatile issues, including cable price hikes; moves by some operators to charge extra for services such as Cable News Network, which have customarily been included in a basic package, and “vertical integration” by giants such as Tele-Communications Inc. and Time Warner Inc., which own both cable systems and program producers.

“Originally, this was supposed to be about program supply. But I think you’ll see people pushing a lot of things out there,” said one cable-TV executive who is familiar with the hearings but declined to be identified.

The Los Angeles hearing will be followed by similar sessions in Orlando, Fla., on March 15 and St. Louis on March 2.

FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes and all three fellow commissioners will conduct the Los Angeles hearings, an FCC spokeswoman said. The commission hasn’t held field hearings since the 1970s, when it conducted nationwide workshops on public participation in TV broadcasting, according to the spokeswoman.

The current cable sessions are part of a congressionally mandated review of a 1984 federal law that largely deregulated the cable industry. The FCC is expected to file a report to Congress by late summer regarding the impact of deregulation.

Several members of Congress, most notably Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), have begun to press for some measure of cable reregulation in the face of complaints about price hikes and deteriorating service in some areas.

(Before assuming the FCC chairmanship last year, Sykes, a former Missouri TV station owner, was a close political ally of Danforth and served as the senator’s campaign manager in 1970.)

Industry representatives argue that cable-TV prices have been relatively modest despite deregulation. They also contend that any move to let municipalities reregulate cable rates would hamper the growth of program services such as the ESPN sports network or Turner Broadcasting System’s TNT network.

Yet a growing chorus of critics have pointed to examples of sharp rate hikes and other alleged abuses by cable operators, which usually enjoy a monopoly in a service area because they have been awarded exclusive franchises by local authorities.

Beverly Hills Mayor Maxwell Salter is expected to testify next week about his city’s disputes with Century Cable. A spokesman for the city said its complaints focus heavily on what it claims was a 90% increase in Century’s basic cable rates during a 20-month period ending last December.

William Rosendahl, Century Cable’s vice president of operations, said he will also testify before the commission. Rosendahl pointed out that his company has been extensively rebuilding its system and has provided the communities it serves with extensive public affairs programming.

Other witnesses scheduled to testify include Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles); cable executives from TCI, United Artists Communications and other companies; representatives of Walt Disney Co., Paramount Communications and MCA Inc., and several independent program producers, local broadcasters and representatives of the cities of Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks.

Privately, some studio executives have said they expect some program producers in Los Angeles to initiate a call for restrictions on the ability of cable operators to own program services, perhaps by extending to cable systems the so-called financial interest and syndication rules that currently bar broadcast networks such as NBC, CBS and ABC from owning production sources.

While noting the vast increase in programming sources that has accompanied the spread of cable TV, one of the executives said: “Nobody is saying cable is bad. But some things have got to be addressed.”

In an effort to defuse pressure for new program ownership restrictions, Denver-based Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest owner of cable systems, recently announced a plan to split into two separate companies.

One company would own the majority of TCI’s cable systems, while a new spinoff would own the company’s stakes in Turner Broadcasting, the Discovery Channel and other programmers. At least initially, however, both companies might share a number of managers and directors, TCI has said.

Another giant, Time Warner, controls 82% of American Television & Communications, the country’s second-largest cable system operator, and also owns both HBO and the Warner Bros. film studio.

The Los Angeles testimony is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. in the public works hearing room, the FCC spokeswoman said.