Must-carry

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In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally-licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system.

1 United States
2 Republic of Ireland
3 External links

[edit] United States

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission regulates this area of business and public policy. These rules were upheld in a 5-4 decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1997 in the case Turner Broadcasting vs. FCC (95-992). The United States was the first country to implement a must-carry scheme.

Although cable service providers routinely carried local affiliates of the major broadcast networks, independent stations and affiliates of minor networks were sometimes not carried, on the premise it would allow cable providers to instead carry non-local programming which they felt would attract more customers to their service. Many cable operators were also equity owners in these cable channels, especially TCI, then the nation's largest multiple system operator (MSO), and had moved to replace local channels with equity-owned programming. This pressure was especially strong on cable systems with limited bandwidth for channels. The smaller local broadcasters argued that by hampering their access to this increasing segment of the local television audience, this posed a threat to the viability of free-to-view broadcast television, which they argued was a worthy public good. Local broadcast stations also argued cable systems were attempting to serve as a "gatekeeper" in competing unfairly for advertising revenue. Some affiliates of major networks also feared that non-local affiliates might negotiate to provide programming to local cable services to expand their advertising market, taking away this audience from local stations, with similar negative impact on free broadcast television. Although cable providers argued that such regulation would impose an undue burden on their flexibility in selecting which services would be most appealing to their customers, the current "must-carry" rules were enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1992, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rules in rejecting the arguments of the cable industry and programmers in the majority decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy. That decision also held that MSO's were functioning as a vertically integrated monopoly.

A side effect of the must-carry rules is that broadcast networks cannot charge the cable-TV companies licence fees for the program content retransmitted on the cable network, except potentially as a part of retransmission consent agreements in lieu of must-carry.

[edit] Exceptions

There are a few exceptions, most notably:

Must-carry may only be applied if the television station has made the request to be carried under this provision.
A station does not have distribution under must-carry legislation until a certain number of days after it provides usable signal to the headend for the cable or satellite provider; the station must pay the expense of leased lines to reach providers such as Colorado-based Dish Network or California-based DirecTV.
Foreign signals, such as Windsor stations or Tijuana's Fox affiliate (XETV-TV), are not required to be carried.
Most Low-power broadcast stations are not required to be carried.

[edit] Digital must-carry

Digital must-carry — also called "dual must-carry" — is the potential requirement that cable companies carry both the analog and digital transmissions of local stations. This is being opposed by numerous television networks, who might be bumped off of digital cable were this to happen, and promoted by TV stations and the National Association of Broadcasters, whom it would benefit by passing their HDTV or multichannel DTV signals through to their cable viewers. In June, 2006 the FCC was poised to pass new digital must-cary rules, but the item was pulled before a vote actually took place.

[edit] Other networks

A variation of "must-carry" also applies to DBS services like DirecTV and DiSH Network, as first mandated by the Satellite Home Viewer Act of 1988. They are not required to carry local stations in every metro area in which they provide service, but must carry all of an area's local stations if they carry any at all. Sometimes, these will be placed on spotbeams: narrowly-directed satellite signals targeted to an area of no more than a few hundred miles diameter, in order to allow the transponder frequencies to be re-used in other markets. In some cases, stations of lower perceived importance are placed on "side satellites" which require a second antenna. This practice has raised some controversy within the industry, leading to the requirement that the satellite provider offer to install any extra dish antenna hardware for free and place a notice to this effect in place of any missing channels.

[edit] Retransmission consent

In the U.S. retansmission consent has often been chosen over must-carry by the major commercial television networks and PBS. Under the present rules, a new agreement is negotiated every three years, and stations must choose must-carry or retransmission consent for each cable system they wish their signal to be carried on. If a broadcaster elects retransmission consent, there is no obligation for the cable system to carry the signal. This option allows broadcasters who own popular stations, such as CBS, NBC and ABC or Fox to request cash or other compensation from cable or satellite providers for signals. These networks have usually attempted to gain further distribution of cable services in which they also hold an equity position rather than direct cash compensation, which cable systems have almost universally balked at paying. In some cases, these channels have been temporarily removed from distribution by systems who felt broadcasters were asking too steep a price for their signal. In one incident, all CBS-owned local stations plus MTV/VH1 and Nickelodeon were removed from DISH Network for two days in 2004.

[edit] Republic of Ireland

In Ireland, cable, MMDS and satellite companies have Comreg regulated "must-carry" stations. For cable companies, this covers RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TV3 and TG4. The same rules apply to licence satellite television (Sky Digital) and digital MMDS. Analogue MMDS companies are required to carry only TV3 due to serious bandwidth limitations.