Martin Calls for Rate Transparency

MARTIN CALLS FOR RATE TRANSPARENCY
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday that consumers should know the wholesale price of cable networks and should be allowed to piece together their channel lineups to better budget their cable spending. “I've been saying for over a year that there is a significant problem in the video area,” Chairman Martin said at a telecommunications conference. “I think that at the very least, we should be able to have a transparency and how much each of those channels is costing, so we are able to see what those costs are.” Since taking office in March 2005, Chairman Martin has stumped for cable a la carte -- a system that would allow consumers to pay for channels one-by-one as an alternative to the purchase of large programming tiers. “I think we should go even further and I think not only should it be transparent to the consumer how much you have to pay for each channel, but I think consumers should be able to say, ‘I don't want that channel and I don't want to have to pay for it.’” he added.
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