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

DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993                   TAG: 9305070618
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NEW FCC RULES MAY REDUCE FEES FOR CABLE SUBSCRIBERS

How long have you got?

The details - loads of them - about how the nation's 10,000-plus cable operators are supposed to set their prices poured forth from the Federal Communications Commission late Monday night. The product of six months of bureaucratic endeavor, the new rules are contained in a forest-felling, phone book-sized stack of documents of such stunning complexity that some cable companies say it could take them weeks to figure out precisely what Washington wants them to do.

The FCC regulations sprawl through 475 pages, including 43 pages of forms and charts, spelling out what constitutes a "reasonable" price for cable service in the government's eyes. To determine whether they meet FCC-mandated price "benchmarks," cable operators must work through a five-part worksheet that calculates more than 40 variables.

"Congratulations!" the document says wryly at its conclusion, after a lengthy explanation of how to compute the maximum permitted rate per channel.

"It does look like your taxes, I'm afraid," said Sandy Wilson, the FCC attorney overseeing the commission's writing of cable rules. But, added Wilson, "We've known for a long time that it would be a big headache, and there's no way around that."

This also is only the first cut. The FCC has promised to add additional language to the regulations by the end of the year.

Federal officials said that the new regulations will reduce monthly rates by a national total of about $1 billion a year, with about three-fourths of the nation's 58 million cable households seeing some decrease. The agency said in early April that a majority of systems will be forced to roll back rates by the maximum 10 percent starting this fall.

In addition, all operators will be required to eliminate price increases that have occurred since Congress passed the cable law in October, potentially whacking another 5 to 7 percentage points off current cable prices.

In general, local rates have risen faster than the industry-wide average of 58 percent between 1986 and 1991, and as such may face higher-than-average rollbacks.

Some observers said the very complexity of the FCC's handiwork could play against widespread rate reductions by fall.