Boucher Wants Input on FCC's Program Carriage Complaint Process

At a hearing on video competition, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) said that among the things the subcommittee wanted input on was whether the Federal Communications Commission's program carriage complaint process works or whether the Congress should try to fix it. His question was driven by carriage complaints about program distributors favoring their own programming over unaffiliated programming. The hearing provided a platform for a host of issues, from retransmission consent and broadband deployment to satellite carriage issues and even one legislator's complaint that the cable company did not reach homes "some distance" from the road. House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said his interest in the video competition issue, which he said the hearing would help frame, was in insuring "diversity, competition, choice and access." He said viewers' and users' interest should be paramount. Chairman Waxman said program carriage and access issues remain despite what he conceded was new competition from the Web and broadcast multicast channels. "As with other areas of telecommunications policy," he said, "the advantages of historic incumbency can be difficult for new entrants to overcome absent government intervention."