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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 7, 1995                   TAG: 9506070064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

COURT BACKS CABLE RATE REGULATIONS

Regulations that have held down cable television rates and saved customers $3.5 billion since 1993 were upheld by a federal appeals court Tuesday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Federal Communications Commission's rate rules are consistent with Congress' intent and are not - as cable companies argued - arbitrary and capricious.

Congress instructed the FCC to craft rate regulations in a 1992 law.

The court also ruled that the FCC's rate provisions do not violate cable companies' First Amendment rights.

The FCC's regulations meet a longstanding Supreme Court test that permits speech to be regulated if the government's interest is important or substantial, the court said.

The FCC hailed the court's decision, which comes as Congress considers dismantling cable rate regulations. Chairman Reed Hundt called it a ``big victory for consumers.''

The cable industry said it was disappointed that the court decided to leave the FCC's regulations ``essentially intact,'' said Dan Brenner, vice president of law and regulatory policy at the National Cable Television Association.

The association is considering its legal options, which include seeking a review by the Supreme Court.

Officials of Time Warner, the lead petitioner in the rate challenge, were not immediately available for comment.

Under the FCC's rate regulations, many of the nation's 11,000 cable companies were ordered to first cut their rates by 10 percent. And, months later, they were ordered to reduce rates by an additional 7 percent.

One of the most important aspects of the decision is that it upholds the FCC's decision to apply the same form of regulation to both the lowest tier of service known as basic - which generally contains mostly local broadcast signals - and upper tiers that generally contain the majority of cable channels like CNN, MTV and ESPN.

The FCC did this to avoid creating any incentive for cable companies to move programming between the basic and upper tiers.

by CNB