Major Defeat!! For Martin As FCC Scales Back His Cable Proposal

[babylonsister]

FCC Wants More Data for Cable TV Report

DIBYA SARKAR | November 28, 2007 12:20 AM EST | AP


WASHINGTON — The country's top communications regulator suffered a major defeat Tuesday night when fellow members of the Federal Communications Commission scuttled his effort to expand government control over cable programming.

A recent FCC report promoted by Kevin Martin, the agency's chairman, found that cable TV reaches a wide enough U.S. audience to trigger a rule within a 1984 law that would give the government significant new powers to ensure program diversity.

But a majority of the agency's five-member commission said the report endorsed flawed data and should have used other sources. Some said they weren't even aware of the agency's own numbers until Monday night.

"Our job of ascertaining the facts is made more difficult because the draft cherry picked the only data that justified the outcome apparently desired while suppressing other data," Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071128/fcc-cable/