CABLE RATES SURGE AGAIN.Byline: Mark Landler Mark Aurel Landler (born October 26, 1965 in Stuttgart, Germany[1]) is an American journalist who has been the European economic correspondent of The New York Times, based in Frankfurt, Germany, since July 2002[2]. and Geraldine Fabrikant The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times For cable television subscribers across the country, 1996 is starting to look a lot like 1986. After a lull in recent years, cable rates are spiking up again - more sharply than at any time since Congress deregulated the industry in the 1980s. In mailboxes from New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. to Norfolk, Va., and Seattle to Sacramento, cable subscribers have received the unwelcome news that their monthly bills are going up anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent. By June, when Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable operator, implements its across-the-board rate increase of 13 percent, most of America's 63 million cable subscribers will be paying up to $3.50 more a month to watch CNN CNN or Cable News Network Subsidiary company of Turner Broadcasting Systems. It was created by Ted Turner in 1980 to present 24-hour live news broadcasts, using satellites to transmit reports from news bureaus around the world. , MTV MTV in full Music Television U.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. and the other channels that are part of basic cable service. Cable operators said the increases are a necessary counterbalance to the stringent rate cuts that the government imposed on them in 1993, after a consumer backlash that prompted Congress to re-regulate the industry. But critics say the industry now is seizing on loopholes in these rules to resume its practice of hefty rate increases. ``This is deja vu See DjVu. ,'' said Gene Kimmelman, the co-director of Consumers Union, a lobbying group in Washington that has been critical of the cable industry. ``These rate increases rank with the largest that occurred after Congress first deregulated cable in 1984.'' What makes this wave of increases remarkable is that it comes even before cable rates are to be deregulated yet again. Under the communications law passed earlier this year, all government controls on cable prices are to be removed - but not until 1999, as the result of a compromise between Republican and Democratic lawmakers. The compromise assumed that by the end of the century, the industry would have vigorous enough competition from satellite television or telephone companies to prevent cable rates from soaring. Until then, in theory, the Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest. is supposed to keep a tight rein on cable rates, allowing increases only for inflation and programming costs. In practice, though, the current rules give cable operators leeway to pass along higher costs to customers. |
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