ACA Continues Lobbying Against Forced Bundling
Small cable operators continue to push the FCC for rules restricting forced bundling. The practice, plus related negotiating practices, "causes substantial problems in various ways for operations, particularly for capacity-constrained systems and resource-constrained operators," the American Cable Association told Media…
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Bureau staffers and an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. The filing said several ACA members cited individual challenges their systems faced with forced bundling requirements by programmers. ACA told the FCC that if the agency lets broadcasters transition to the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard, it should require separate retransmission consent negotiations for a station's ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals so 3.0 negotiations "are based upon the value that carrying such ATSC 3.0 signal brings to operators and their subscribers rather than the importance of the continued carriage of ATSC 1.0." Among those at the meetings were ACA Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman, Horizon Cable Vice President Susan Daniel, Frankfort (Kentucky) Plant Board Assistant General Manager-Cable/Telecom John Higginbotham, Atlantic Broadband General Counsel Leslie Brown, TDS Telecom regulatory counsel Sara Cole and Liberty Puerto Rico General Counsel John Conrad, plus Media Bureau staff including acting Chief Michelle Carey. ACA repeatedly has criticized forced bundling practices by programmers (see 1608290048).