FCC Rule Making on Carriage of DTV Signals Released -- Comments due July 16th
This afternoon the Commission released its Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) regarding the carriage of digital television (DTV) broadcast signals by cable systems. The NPRM was adopted at last week's FCC open meeting and and seeks answers to essentially two questions: First, how to objectively define "material degradation" for purposes of determining compliance with the statutory requirement that cable systems carry local broadcast signals without material degradation; and second, how to ensure that the signals of digital television stations are available to analog cable subscribers after the DTV transition is completed on February 17, 2009. In connection with these two specific issues, the NPRM also seeks input on ways to "promote the goal of . . . transitioning all consumers - including cable consumers - to digital" as a general matter.
Both issues are sure to draw a significant number of comments, however, the question of how the Commission's cable carriage rules will be modified to address the conversion of local broadcast stations from analog to digital will undoubtedly be a hotly debated issue. The Commission has taken as its starting point for the discussion of DTV cable carriage the statutory requirement that broadcast stations that are entitled to mandatory cable carriage must be viewable via cable by all television receivers of a subscriber that are connecetd to a cable system by a cable operator or for which a cable operator provides a connection. To achieve the viewability requirement the rulemaking suggests two alternatives for cable systems:
- Carry the signals of must-carry stations in analog format to all analog cable subscribers, or
- For “all-digital” systems, carry those signals only in digital format, provided that all subscribers wtih analog TV sets have the necessary equipment to view the broadcast content.
Comments will be due on July 16, 2007, with Reply Comments due August 16, 2007, and a copy of the NPRM, which includes the Commissioners' statements on the issue, is available here. Comments may be submitted in paper, or through the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) available here.