Cable Television Act of 1992Vertical Ownership Rules

On reconsideration of the cable television vertical ownership (or channel occupancy) rules adopted in its Second Report and Order, the Federal Communications Commission (the ``Commission'') has adopted a Memorandum Opinion and Order on Reconsideration of the Second Report and Order (``Reconsideration Order''). The Reconsideration Order denies petitions for reconsideration filed by the Center for Media Education/ Consumer Federation of America (collectively ``CME'') and Bell Atlantic Corporation (``Bell Atlantic''). Specifically, the Reconsideration Order: Denies CME's petition requesting that the Commission; reduce the percentage of activated channels that a cable operator may devote to video programming in which it has an attributable interest from 40% to 20%; reverse the Commission's decision to include over-the-air broadcast, public, educational, governmental (``PEG''), and leased access channels when calculating total channel capacity; reverse the Commission's decision to exempt local and regional networks from the channel occupancy limits; reverse the Commission's decision not to apply channel occupancy limits beyond a system's first 75 channels; and reverse the Commission's decision to grandfather all vertically integrated programming services being carried as of the effective date of the 1992 Cable Act. The Reconsideration Order also denies Bell Atlantic's petition asking that the Commission reconsider its decision to apply the vertical ownership limits to cable systems facing actual head-to-head competition.