Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990                   TAG: 9005080080
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: 
SOURCE: RICHARD W. STEVENSON THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                 LENGTH: Medium

FLEDGLING NETWORK WINS FCC OK TO EXPAND PROGRAMMING HOURS

The ruling allows the network to go ahead with its plan to broadcast 18.5 hours of programming a week starting with the fall season, up from 9 hours a week in the current season.

The ruling was the first significant decision by the commission in what is shaping up as the final round in a long and bitter fight between the networks and Hollywood's program producers over who should benefit from the often-lucrative sales of television reruns.

As the parent of both an upstart network and a big studio, Fox for several years had been caught in the middle.

But earlier this year, Fox broke ranks with the other studios and sided with the networks, which are seeking greater freedom to own the shows they broadcast and to benefit from their eventual sales into syndication.

The networks are now limited to owning just a few shows and are barred from syndicating them themselves.

The commission granted Fox a one-year exemption from a rule that would effectively bar it from broadcasting more than 15 hours a week.

Breaking the 15-hour threshold would officially make Fox a network under the government's current regulations.

But without a waiver, Fox could not go over 15 hours because of its ownership of programming through its 20th Century Fox studio, which makes "L.A. Law" and other shows for the three top networks.

"This permits us to go forward with everything we had planned for the coming fall season," said Preston Padden, a senior vice president of Fox Broadcasting. "This is a great victory."

Fox has 132 affiliates, 115 of them UHF stations, and they cover 90 percent of the country.

In its statement, the FCC said the waiver would "advance the commission's oft-stated public-interest objective of encouraging new national networks."

The commission said the waiver would also help foster stability among UHF stations and would help create additional children's programming.

But the commission said that granting the waiver "in no way prejudges or foreshadows the outcome of its re-evaluation of the syndication and financial interest rules."

And it said that if its review of the rules does not result in a new definition of what constitutes a network, Fox will be required to drop back to 15 hours a week after one year.

The studios and the networks are attempting to reach a compromise on the issue of program ownership, but remain far apart.

In the absence of a negotiated settlement between the two sides in the next month, the commission will begin full-scale hearings on whether to revise the rules.

The networks argue that the rules, which are intended to keep the networks from exerting too much financial and creative power in Hollywood, are antiquated in an age in which the studios are aggressively moving into businesses like cable that compete with the networks.