Appendix C The Effect of the FCC's Syndicated Under the FCC's 1972 Cable Television Regulations, cable television systems in the top 100 television rarkets are generally permitted to carry all 'local' television stations and two (or three, in some instances) distant independent stations. Programming on the distant independent stations which is under contract to the local market television stations is subject to the FCC's syndicated exclusivity regulations. When a local-market station requests 'protection' of its programs under the exclusivity rules, a cable system must 'blackout' the programming on the imported stations which is also under contract to the local-market station. Requests for such protection are known by NCTA to be in force in new CATV systers in such markets as North Little Rock, Arkansas (Market #50); Harpton and Newport News, Virginia (Market #44); Scranton, Pennsylvania (Market #49.1 Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (Market #23.; Albany, New York Market 14); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Market #4); North Syracuse, New York (Market #15). Some examples of the effect of the exclusivity regations in these television markets is shown below I (2) Scranton, Pa., is located in television Market Due to exclusivity requests from all three market of one of the three distant stations, Newport News, Va., in lenate in television station in the market. The cable mystum 1. New rt At present only one of the four market stations requests exclusivity protection. Yet, in a recent week, requests for protection from this one station against one of the imported stations resulted in the 'blackcut' of 21 percent of the full-day programs on the distant station. (3) The cable Wauwatosa, Wi., is located in television market #23 (Milwaukee, Wi.). There are three network stations and one independent station in the market. system, presently under construction, will import two independent stations when it becomes operational. Although the system is not yet in operation, it has already received written and verbal requests for syndicated program protection from all four market stations. The requests require that 62 percent of the daily programming of one distant station, and 58 percent of the daily programming of the other distant station be 'blacked out'. The devastating effect of the pro-iram 'blackouts' is illustrated in the following three pages. Pages 5 and 6 represent the Friday, January 24, 1975 schedules of the two Chico independent television stations to be imported into Wauwatosa. Page 7 shows the limited number of programs from the two stations that would be permitted to be shown by Program titles which must be the cable system. 'protected' are 'Xed' out, and would not be available to cable subscribers. |