FCC Would Let Some Cities Regulate Cable TV : Government: The agency’s proposals are in response to a rising tide of compaints about price hikes.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday proposed new rules that could return to some cities the right to regulate basic cable television rates.

Under existing rules, only about 3% of the nation’s 9,500-plus cable TV systems are under price restraints, and there have been rising complaints that cable systems raise prices willy-nilly and get away with poor service.

The proposed new rules, adopted on a 5-0 vote, would make it tougher for cable systems to avoid price regulation, while at the same time avoiding what FCC officials view as heavy-handed controls.

The proposal says local communities may regulate a cable system’s “basic tier” of services, which includes network broadcast stations, unless one of the three following conditions exist:

* There are six or more unduplicated over-the-air channels available and the cable system is subscribed to by less than 50% of the TV homes in a community.

* There are other multichannel service providers in the community, such as microwave cable or direct broadcast satellites, that are available to 50% of the homes with cable and are actually being subscribed to by 10% of those homes.

* The cable system offers a minimum level of service and programs at a reasonable price that is comparable to communities in which there is effective competition. This so-called good actor clause is favored by a number of FCC commissioners.

FCC officials would not speculate on how many cable systems could avoid rate re-regulation under the new proposals.

The proposals could affect parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties where cable penetration is above the 50% level.

Following a period of public comment, the commission will adopt final rules sometime next year.

FCC Chairman Alfred C. Sikes said the proposals would “give some measure of consumer protection . . . and some assurance of fairness” to the cable TV industry.

Sikes has championed competition among cable systems and satellite broadcasters as a means of guaranteeing continued growth in the cable industry and holding prices down for subscribers.

National Cable Television Assn. President James Mooney, however, said the FCC proposals could hurt the cable industry.

“However moderate the intentions of the FCC, this proposal raises the prospect of the government inhibiting the future development of cable programming by crimping its economic life blood,” Mooney said.

Gene Kimmelman, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, said the rules don’t get at the root problem: pricing for the most popular cable programs, such as ESPN, the Turner networks and Discovery Channel, which cable systems typically don’t offer on the basic tier.

“This will offer only the slightest protection for consumers and still leave them totally at the mercy of cable operators for the most popular programs,” Kimmelman said.