FCC Drops Planned Vote On Multicasts

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin yesterday dropped plans to vote this week on whether to require cable companies to carry extra digital channels produced by TV broadcasters, suggesting he could not muster the votes.

Martin last week placed the issue on the agenda for an FCC meeting scheduled for Wednesday, but late yesterday the FCC said it had been removed. FCC spokeswoman Tamara Lipper said in a statement that the item was pulled from the agenda because "there did not appear to be consensus for moving forward at this time."

Wednesday's meeting will be the first in well over a year that Martin will have a three-member Republican majority on the five-member FCC. The decision suggested that the commission's newest member, Republican Robert M. McDowell, may not have been willing to go along with Martin's wishes.

The two Democrats on the commission, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, both voted against requiring cable companies to carry more digital channels produced by broadcasters -- a practice known as "multicasting" -- when the FCC last addressed the issue in February 2005.

It is possible to squeeze several digital channels into the bandwidth taken up by an analog channel. Broadcasters have argued that cable companies should carry multiple digital channels rather than just the single channel.

Cable companies oppose this, arguing that they are required to carry only a local station's primary channel. Should the FCC change this policy, they are expected to immediately launch a court challenge.

Aides to Adelstein, Copps and McDowell were not immediately available to comment.