roundtable: Congressmen Endanger Fair Cable Rate

roundtable: Congressmen Endanger Fair Cable Rate

Congressmen Endanger Fair Cable Rate

Center for Media Education (cme@access.digex.net)
Thu, 10 Feb 1994 18:58:09 -0500 (EST) 

From: Center for Media Education <cme@access.digex.net>
Message-Id: <199402102358.AA14553@access1.digex.net>
Subject: Congressmen Endanger Fair Cable Rate
To: roundtable@cni.org
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 18:58:09 -0500 (EST)

CENTER FOR MEDIA EDUCATION
PRESS RELEASE
FEBRUARY 10, 1994
____________________________________________________

LOWER CABLE TV BILLS THREATENED BY CAMPAIGN
LED BY HOUSE REPUBLICANS AND CABLE INDUSTRY

WASHINGTON, DC--Plans by the Federal Communications 
Commission (FCC) to  reduce consumers' monthly cable TV 
rates may be thwarted by an intense  lobbying campaign 
organized by the cable TV industry.  "Cable lobbyists and 
their Congressional supporters are working overtime in order 
to deprive the nation's 58 million cable subscribers of the 
rate reductions promised when Congress passed the 1992 Cable 
TV Act," charged Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the 
Center for Media Education (CME).  The FCC was expected to 
announce on February 22 that it was adopting new rules 
designed to strengthen its implementation of the Cable Act.  

Republican Members of the House Telecommunications 
Subcommittee sent a joint letter to FCC Chair Reed Hundt 
yesterday stating that the "justification" for further 
lowering rates had disappeared because "complaints about 
cable rates and service (had) died down to a virtual 
nullity."  The letter also claimed that the construction of 
the "Information Superhighway" would be threatened if the 
cable industry had to lower its rates.  

"These Congressmen do a disservice to every consumer of 
cable TV," said Chester.  "As Congress itself has 
documented, the cable industry had been routinely 
overcharging its customers.  Cable operators had been 
allowed to earn monopoly profits with monthly cable TV bills 
skyrocketing at more than three times the rate of inflation.  
And the FCC's current rules on cable rates have been 
inadequate.  Across-the-board rate reductions of 20% to 30% 
were promised, but many consumers have seen their bills 
rise, and many others have only received token reductions."  
 
"FCC Chair Hundt and Commissioners Barrett and Quello must 
now demonstrate that they are more concerned about the 
average cable customer than well-paid cable lobbyists and 
their supporters," said Chester.  "We hope they will have 
the courage and independence to resist the cable TV lobby, 
and order the reduction of still over-inflated cable TV 
bills."

CME  is a nonprofit consumer organization based in 
Washington, D.C.  It operates CableWatch, a program designed 
to protect cable TV consumers.  The first issue of the 
CableWatch publication series, entitled It Pays to Complain, 
informed consumers about their rights to contest unfair 
cable rates. 

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