Martin Looks To Ease Small Ops' Burden

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin last fall got rules passed that effectively required nearly every U.S. cable system to carry TV stations in both analog and digital formats starting next February, in cases where stations relied on mandatory carriage rights to get distributed on local cable systems. Last Tuesday, Chairman Martin softened that stance, after pressure from Capitol Hill and cable trade groups. The result: A proposal that small cable systems would not have to retransmit the high-definition signals of must-carry TV stations. That proposal, as spelled out by Chairman Martin, would have the effect of relaxing that “dual carriage” mandate, which posed channel capacity concerns for small systems with bandwidth constraints.
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