FCC's Martin still takes no action on bundling

Roughly a year ago, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said he would take action that would ban programmers from bundling channels they were selling to cable companies. But one year later, Chairman Martin hasn't introduced even a draft rule on the program bundling subject. On a Friday, conference call with reporters, Chairman Martin said not much was going on with the idea, which is known as wholesale programming unbundling. The idea that Martin would do anything on it becomes even less likely as his chairmanship comes close to an end -- a new administration in January would bring in a new chairman. If Martin introduced something now, it would be very unlikely to be adopted by the time he moved out of his position as chairman. The quasi "a la carte" proposal would have been seen as a first step before Martin moved forward to require a full-out "a la carte" measure that would allow consumers to choose which channels they wanted, rather than the current system where individuals buy large packages of channels. That also, now seems unlikely.