Page 92 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Cable Carr age D sputes | 1

cable and booster antenna systems to do so. In 1966, ostensibly to protect the
potential growth of local UHF (ultrahigh frequency) stations in metropolitan
areas, the FCC banned cable importations of distant broadcast signals into the
top 100 TV markets, effectively stalling cable development there.
While these early cable systems were primarily antenna systems for better
broadcast reception, in the late 1960s broadband cable offered more channel
capacity and two-way interactivity. Rather than seeing it as a threat to local
broadcasters, policy makers, nonprofit foundations, and social scientists found
“Blue Sky” potential in cable to offer a variety of communication services such
as job information, health and child care, distance education, and opportunities
for citizen participation in local community affairs. The Johnson administra-
tion released the President’s Task Force on Communication Policy, Ralph Lee
Smith published the widely read The Wired Nation, and the Sloan Foundation
circulated On the Cable, all championing broadband cable’s potential to offer a
wider array of programming, including the uplifting cultural programming dear
to the critics of the vast wasteland, and a potential communication tool to ad-
dress urban poverty and racial inequality.

LiFTing CarriagE rEsTriCTions
In 1972, the FCC lifted the importation restrictions into major cities and
required larger cable systems to offer at least 12 channels, two-way capacity,
and three access channels for public, educational, and government use. How-
ever, the FCC retained its restrictions on pay-TV from two years earlier, which
prevented pay-TV channels from using recent motion pictures, certain sports
programming, and series with interconnected plots in anticipation that they
might be otherwise siphoned away from free-to-air broadcasting. By the mid-
1970s, the cable industry grew as did its lobbying power, FCC staff changes under
the Ford and Carter administrations produced advocates of cable deregulation,
satellites offered cable program producers national distribution, and the federal
courts increasingly demanded factual evidence for cable restrictions. Ongoing
disputes over the copyright liability of cable operators were settled in 1976 with
the creation of a Copyright Royalty Tribunal that established compulsory licens-
ing fees for programs. By the end of the decade, the federal courts found pay-TV
and antisiphoning rules unfounded and the FCC lifted all cable programming
restrictions.
With program restrictions lifted, carriage disputes shifted to the franchis-
ing process where municipal governments asserted their authority over chan-
nel capacities, franchise fees, local ownership rules, subscription rates, and
public access provisions. In 1984, Congress addressed this with the first federal
laws for cable television that gave cities authority over the franchising process
and public access requirements, but limited franchise fees, forbade federal and
state subscription rate regulations, and limited the powers of city government
to regulate rates. With the stability of federal rules, cable penetration and new
channels grew rapidly, but so did cable mergers, subscription rates, and ser-
vice complaints. To redress this, in 1992 Congress enacted new legislation that