Comcast Fights Ownership Limits

COMCAST FIGHTS OWNERSHIP LIMITS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
With phone companies entering cable markets and consumers surfeited with video from iPods and Internet sites like YouTube, Comcast is advocating that federal cable-ownership limits are both unnecessary and judicially unsustainable. As the largest U.S. cable company, Comcast is the only cable operator that has to worry that a transaction involving a few million cable subscribers could bump into cable ownership caps enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. On an informal basis, the FCC won't allow a cable company to serve more than 30% of pay TV subscribers. With 26.2 million subscribers, Comcast has 27% of the 96.8 million subscribers to pay television, the multiple-system operator said last Thursday, citing Kagan Research data. Implementing a 1992 law, the FCC has designed cable-ownership rules based on concerns that a few giant cable companies would hold too much power over programmers seeking distribution. But in a Feb. 14 filing, Comcast insisted that because of “revolutionary changes in the marketplace,” market forces rather than anticompetitive motives dictate the programming decisions of cable operators. “It is clear that no cable operator has either the incentive or the ability to effectuate the harm at which the statute was aimed: obstructing the flow of video programming to the consumer,” Comcast explained to the FCC in a filing prepared by lawyers expert in regulatory and constitutional law.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6419399.html?display=Policy