Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — The country’s top communications regulator scrambled to save face Tuesday as fellow members of the Federal Communications Commission scuttled his effort to expand government control over cable programming.
A recent FCC report promoted by Kevin Martin, the agency’s chairman, found that cable TV reaches a wide enough U.S. audience to trigger a rule within a 1984 law that would give the government significant new powers to ensure program diversity.
But the cable industry disputes the data underlying the report, and a majority of the agency’s five-member commission expressed similar doubts.
