Cable Re-Regulation Bill Headed for a Vote

A substantially weaker cable TV re-regulation bill appears to be headed for a vote in the House of Representatives after a House committee on Tuesday dropped two key provisions opposed by the cable TV industry.

The House Energy & Commerce Committee, which is preparing the legislation for a full House vote later this summer, is now considering two different substitute bills in order to avoid further delays in long-sought cable TV re-regulation.

The deleted provisions would have forced cable companies to pay to carry local broadcast stations and would have compelled cable networks such as CNN and HBO to make themselves available to rival satellite and microwave services.

But the changes may be short-lived.

Several congressmen who support tough cable re-regulation have pledged to introduce the deleted provisions during debate on the House floor or during conference committee sessions between the House and Senate.

The Senate earlier this year voted to re-regulate cable TV rates, which have more than doubled--even tripled in certain parts of the country--since the industry was deregulated in 1987.

The two substitute bills have been advanced respectively by Reps. Norman Lent (R-N.Y.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee. Markey’s subcommittee last April narrowly approved a cable TV re-regulation bill that was widely hailed by consumer advocates.

Lent, the top Republican on the committee, has introduced a substitute bill that analysts said is almost identical to a cable re-regulation bill passed in 1990 by the House, but which later died in the Senate. The bill would make fewer cable TV channels subject to rate regulation, but would not force cable operators to pay a fee to local broadcasters to carry their signal.

Markey’s substitute version, although subjecting more cable channels to rate regulation, also drops a measure that would force cable networks to make their programming available to competitors, in addition to dropping the “retransmission consent” provision.

Both Markey and Lent said they were offering the substitute bills in order to avoid further delays from the House Judiciary Committee, which has claimed that the two provisions involve antitrust and copyright issues that fall under its jurisdiction.

The cable TV industry, although resigned to the inevitability of some kind of re-imposition of rate regulation, is vigorously opposed to the program access and retransmission consent provisions because they will entail higher costs and potentially greater competition.