Cable Braces to Fight Regulatory Attempts : TV: Legislation is introduced to impose price constraints, limit the channels and subscribers per system and boost industry competition.

WASHINGTON —  Cable television executives say they’re ready to fend off a new congressional effort to re-regulate their industry.

“This bird didn’t fly last year and it won’t fly this year,” Rob Stoddard, spokesman for the Community Antenna Television Assn., said Monday after new legislation was introduced to impose price and other business constraints on the cable industry.

“The industry’s opposition will be just as strong this year as it was in the last Congress and perhaps even more so,” Stoddard said.

The new measure, sponsored by Sens. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), would return to local governments the authority to control rates for basic cable service, which generally includes local TV stations and some news and government channels.

Gore, who repeatedly has called cable an unregulated monopoly, said, “Cable television customers are being gouged, and current law tells the cable companies it’s OK to be a thief.”

The House approved similar legislation last year, but the Senate bill died after the Bush Administration threatened a veto.

“We tried to work something out last year, but the process moved in such a way that it was impossible to keep the debate focused on consumer issues,” said John Wolfe of the National Cable Television Assn.

Also, the Federal Communications Commission has proposed rules that could return to some cities the right to regulate basic cable rates. Wolfe said the FCC proceeding will “address in a disciplined manner and a nonpartisan manner the consumer issues concerning cable TV.”

The proposed new legislation would:

* Allow local governments to regulate basic cable rates in areas where there is no competition from another cable system.

* Require cable systems to carry local broadcast channels and limit their ability to shift a station’s channel position.

* Order the FCC to limit the number of subscribers a cable company could reach nationally and limit the number of channels one programmer could occupy on a cable system.

* Require increased paid access to programming by satellite dish, wireless and other such providers to insure increased competition.

Prices for basic cable tiers were generally regulated by local franchising authorities prior to enactment of the 1984 Cable Act. The law removed most controls effective in 1987, and prices soared.

The congressional General Accounting Office reported that rates climbed an average of 29% from December, 1986, to October, 1988--four times inflation. At the same time, the average number of channels offered increased from 24 to 30 on the lowest-priced basic tier.

The accounting office said prices climbed an additional 10% in 1989, twice the inflation rate. Cable officials justified the hikes saying prices were simply playing catch-up after years of being held artificially low by local governments.