fX Affects C-SPAN’s Viewership : Cable television: Some operators are dropping the public-affairs network to make room for the new Fox channel Wednesday. It’s the law.

When fX, the new cable network from Fox, begins programming Wednesday, it will be available in 18 million U.S. households, said to be the largest launch of a cable channel in history. But fX’s gain will be C-SPAN’s loss.

“Some 1.1-million cable subscribers will lose C-SPAN entirely or see us part time due to cable systems picking up fX,” said Brian Lamb, chairman of C-SPAN, the 15-year-old cable channel that televises congressional proceedings and other public-affairs events.

Lamb blames provisions in the 1992 Cable TV Act for this development, which he says gave Fox and the other broadcast networks an unfair advantage in rolling out new cable channels.

“This is government meddling in communications of the highest order,” Lamb said angrily. “I have nothing against fX, but the government has given the broadcast networks a powerful jump-start with their new cable networks, an advantage that no one else has.”

What’s more, Lamb complained, the same law earlier led to another 2.5 million subscribers--including some in Anaheim, Pasadena and Alhambra--losing all or part of their access to C-SPAN programming.

The Cable TV Act prohibited cable companies from carrying a broadcast signal without the consent of the station. If a station wanted to provide the signal for free, cable operators in the immediate area were obligated to carry it, even if they hadn’t done so in the past--the so-called “must-carry” rule that meant dropping or cutting back on existing channels.

If a station didn’t want to give away its signal, it could negotiate for “retransmission consent.” This is the route the networks took with the stations they own, but most cable operators balked at paying cash to the broadcasters, so many of them struck deals instead that guaranteed space for network-owned cable channels in exchange for the right to continue carrying their over-the-air programming.

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ABC quickly brought forth ESPN-2, now available in 14 million homes; Fox developed fX and NBC will launch America’s Talking, an all-talk channel, on July 4, with an initial reach of more than 10 million homes. (CBS chose not to go forward with a cable enterprise.)

fX’s weekday lineup will mix reruns of “Dynasty,” “Hart to Hart,” “Fantasy Island,” “Wonder Woman,” “In Living Color,” “Batman” and “Greatest American Hero” with seven hours a day of original programming, ranging from a 6:30-9 a.m. information show along the lines of “Good Morning America,” to a pet show at 2:30 p.m., an issue-of-the-day show hosted by Jane Wallace at 8 p.m., a music video program at 11 p.m. and a viewer call-in show at 12:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, dozens of other new cable channels are struggling to find an outlet in the crowded cable universe. Most cable systems simply don’t have the channel capacity to handle anywhere near the volume of programming that is being offered. If they decide to take something new, it often means dropping something else or forcing two services to share time on one channel.

“It’s the ‘law of unintended consequences’ run amok,” said Lawrence Grossman, president of Horizons Network, a proposed cable channel that would be a “cultural C-SPAN,” offering lectures, readings and other symposiums featuring authors, scientists and artists. “The government has given the broadcast networks a preferred seat on the bus for their new cable channels, while all the new independent services have been pushed to the back of the bus.”

And with cable companies chafing under new rate cuts ordered by the Federal Communications Commission, new channels such as Grossman’s may not get a better seat anytime soon. The cable operators say that the government has severely restricted their ability to generate the revenue needed to upgrade and expand.

“The FCC clearly intended to create incentives for new networks, but the most recent rules have had the opposite effect,” Grossman said. “They’ve helped to create a situation that discourages new and innovative program services.”

Horizons Network and Ovation Network, a proposed fine-arts network whose executives include former National Gallery of Art curator Carter Brown, recently asked the FCC to look at the impact of its regulations on smaller networks. Kathleen Waldman, deputy chief of the FCC’s cable services bureau, said that the agency may do so.

“We are open to hearing arguments about whether we’ve provided adequate incentives to add new programming and maintain investment in public-interest programming like C-SPAN,” Waldman said. “We obviously didn’t intend for the rules to discourage diversity in programming.”

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The cable industry also has challenged the constitutionality of the “must-carry” rule, arguing that, under the First Amendment, the government may not dictate the programming that cable operators offer. A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is expected soon. If it votes to overturn the law, C-SPAN could win back some of the channel space it has lost.

Some C-SPAN fans aren’t waiting for the government to act, however. They’ve mounted local campaigns to protest the replacement of C-SPAN with fX. “People are outraged that we are going to go off and they are going to get reruns of ‘Dynasty’ instead,” Lamb said.

In McAllen, Tex., the announcement that TCI Cablevision planned to drop C-SPAN in favor of fX prompted citizens to demand a meeting with the mayor.

“I’m getting beat up by my customers, but I don’t have a lot of options,” said TCI General Manager Neil Hamen. “We have contract obligations to take fX, we have to take broadcast signals, we’re channel-locked--the people in Washington who passed the regulations are reaping what they’ve sown.”