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

DATE: SATURDAY, May 14, 1994                   TAG: 9405160148
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CABLE TV PRICE REGULATIONS SET TO START

After months of controversy, new federal cable TV price rules will begin going into effect Sunday. Over the next two months, cable operators will be changing their prices to reflect Washington's order to cut rates as much as 17 percent from September 1992 levels.

But, like everything connected with the 2-year-old cable price issue, it isn't quite that simple.

The Federal Communications Commission's new regulations - which modify an earlier round imposed in September 1993 - are extraordinarily complex, with a variety of qualifiers, exemptions and caveats. The complexity reflects the FCC's attempt to cover all of the 11,000 cable systems in the United States - some small, some large, and all selling their services in slightly different ways.

For this reason, the new rules will produce different outcomes for the 58 million households that buy cable service each month. "There's no such thing as a typical subscriber or system," said Decker Anstrom, president of the Washington-based National Cable Television Association.

Despite this, one general statement seems safe: If your bill goes down 17 percent, you're one of the lucky ones.

Reductions on your total monthly bill are likely to be smaller than that, say those familiar with the regulations. And some people may even see price increases under this new system, though not as many as saw them last September. The FCC appears to have plugged the major loopholes that led to price increases for as many as one-third of all subscribers in that first round. Outrage over those higher bills led the FCC to rewrite its regulations.

FCC officials had no firm predictions about how much customers would save under the new system, saying it will take weeks before all companies refigure their prices.

Yet here's why your savings may be less than advertised:

The 17 percent cut affects only a portion of your bill - so-called "basic" and "expanded basic" program packages. Franchise fees, taxes and pay-per-view events and "premium" channels such as HBO, for which consumers pay an extra fee, are not subject to price controls. These charges can be raised after Sunday, the day on which a 13-month freeze on cable company revenues ends.

What's more, cable systems that have historically kept their prices low won't be subject to the full 17 percent reduction on the basic and expanded basic packages.

A big chunk of savings already has been built into most bills. Last September, the FCC ordered cable equipment charges to be reduced to the operators' cost plus a small profit. People who pay for lots of cable equipment saw big reductions at that time.

Any new reductions will be partially eaten up by a 3 percent increase for inflation.

by CNB