Digital TV Facts: The Latest

Cable TV customers who have not upgraded to digital service would nonetheless enjoy continued access to local stations, under a plan circulated by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Without federal action, local channels could disappear from the television screens of some analog cable subscribers following the switchoff of analog TV broadcasts on February 17, 2009. While cable companies have proposed their own remedies to this pressing problem, the issue has long remained on the back burner for regulators.

If Martin’s plan is approved by the commission, cable systems will carry required local stations in both digital and analog form starting in early 2009, Ted Hearn of Multichannel News reports. Subscribers to traditional analog cable service would be able to receive local channels as they do today. Unless regulators act, some cable customers who own conventional analog television sets will need to get digital cable boxes for local-channel access.

The “dual-carriage” proposal would apply to local stations that receive mandatory carriage under FCC “must-carry” rules. Stations that reject must-carry status in favor of negotiated carriage under “retransmission consent” regulations are not included.

Cable companies that have gone all-digital would also be exempt, Hearn reports. Digital cable customers should already have a way of receiving local stations, even without new federal rules.

If successful, Martin would deliver a giant favor to the broadcasting industry, which doesn’t want to risk losing viewers because of the switch to DTV. But the last time he indulged station owners, with a plan to mandate “multicast must-carry,” he was unable to win support from a majority of commissioners. The new plan would apply to only a single channel per station—even as the move to digital broadcasting allows each local station to offer up to six separate channels.

• Link: Multichannel News

Related:
• Analog cable TV: Getting ready for 2009
• What is multicasting?