Martin's 75-Cent Solution

As the Bush Administration nears its end, so too is the FCC chairmanship of Kevin Martin. He seems determined to influence how cable operators and their program suppliers go about providing some 64.7 million homes with video channels dedicated to an assortment of news, sports and entertainment. Earlier this month, he floated a new idea he hopes will reverse the trend of rising cable prices: Allow cable operators to eject from expanded basic service — the most widely purchased cable programming tier — any channel that charges wholesale license-fee rates of 75 cents or more per subscriber, per month. Martin’s 75-cent plan is rooted in a rulemaking proposal the FCC adopted last September, which asked whether the agency has the authority to require programmers to allow pay TV distributors to purchase every channel at wholesale on an a la carte basis. The agency’s vote was the fruit of a five-year effort by small cable operators to get the FCC to focus on wholesale program tying and bundling practices. Small cable operators in particular want to break up expanded basic to provide consumers with more choice.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6555289.html?nid=4262