Senate Panel OKs Bill to Re-Regulate Cable TV Fees

The Senate Commerce Committee passed a bill Thursday to re-regulate cable television rates in an important step toward giving consumers federal protection from skyrocketing fees.

The legislation sent to the Senate floor on a vote of 18 to 1, would return to the Federal Communications Commission the authority to regulate rates for cable television services.

“We’re going to put the FCC back watching these things. I think cable is going to be disciplining itself,” said Sen. Ernest Hollings, (D-S.C.), the committee’s chairman.

Since the cable television industry was deregulated in 1984, consumers have complained of higher cable prices and declining service.

Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.) said the cable industry has been in a state of chaos since deregulation and has turned into “a monopoly that’s out of control.”

The proposed legislation “assures the consumers that from now on, cable companies are not going to have a totally free reign,” Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.) said.

Danforth said cable rates have increased 40% for about one-quarter of cable subscribers since deregulation and have gone up by 29% since January, 1987.

In the years since cable was introduced in 1948 to improve television reception in remote areas, the industry has grown into a $13- billion business. More than half the nation’s homes have cable TV.

James Mooney, president of the National Cable Television Assn., said the proposed legislation is “much more modest and scaled back” than the cable industry had expected.

Still, the industry objects to many of the bill’s provisions and a battle is expected over restrictions on the exclusive distribution of programming.

The legislation did not address efforts by telephone companies to enter the cable business. An amendment allowing phone companies to carry video signals through fiber optic lines was withdrawn minutes before the final vote.

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), the amendment’s author, struck a deal with the committee to pull his amendment and resubmit it as a bill after he was promised it would get a full hearing next month.

Several committee members said the amendment would kill the chances of the cable bill’s passage by the full Senate.