[opendtv] news: FCC OKs First Multicast Must-Carry

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6251588.html?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP

FCC OKs First Multicast Must-Carry

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/25/2005 5:44:00 PM


The FCC has decided to grant broadcasters analog and digital 
multicast must-carry in Alaska and Hawaii.

Analog must-carry becomes effective Dec. 8 of this year, digital 
must-carry by June 8, 2007. The FCC did not grant dual must-carry, 
finding that the analog signal does not have to be carried once the 
digital must-carry deadline kicks in.

In the contiguous 48, DBS companies are not required to carry local 
broadcast stations, though if they choose to carry one, they must 
carry all. Alaska and Hawaii were considered special cases, with 
remote populations that may not have adequate access to either local 
TV stations or cable service.

The ruling came as part of the FCC's implementation of Congress' 
reauthorization of the Satellite Home Viewer Reauthorization Act 
(SHVERA), essentially the rules of the road for satellite 
broadcasting.

Unfortunately for broadcasters seeking precedent, the FCC was careful 
to write the rules so that it was clear that the multicast-must carry 
decision was limited to this special case in thse two states (it 
ruled Guam and Puerto Rico shouldn't be included). "Congress took 
steps to confine the breadth and burden of the regulation by 
directing the multicast and HD carriage obligation to apply only in 
the states of Alaska and Hawaii," said the commission. 

The FCC has already ruled that it did not interpret digital 
must-carry to apply to cable carriage of all of a broadcasters' 
multicast signals, but instead to only a replication of its primary 
signal. The FCC's cable must-carry decision was based on its 
interpretation of Congress' use of the  phrase "primary video" to 
describe the digital broadcast signal that cable must carry.

The SHVERA language did not include that phrase, and beyond that, 
referred to carriage of "the signals originating as digital signals," 
which it saw as clear direction to include multicast signals.

Broadcasters are hoping to get Congress to give similar direction in 
a new DTV transition bill teed up for September mark-up.

The FCC commissioners have said Congress is free to correct them if 
they have misinterpreted the limitations of "primary video."

Coincidentally or not, the co-chairmen of the powerful Senate 
Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FCC, are Senators 
Ted Stevens (Alaska) and Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), both of whom are 
concerned about their state's access to the full spectrum of the 
communications revolution.
 
 
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