FCC Commish Wants to Revisit Multicasting

Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps said this week that his agency should take a second look at rules favoring cable companies is a dispute with broadcasters over the carriage of multiple feeds of digital TV transmissions. In the 4-1 vote last month, Copps voted against must-carry multicasting, but he now says that he would favor it if it were coupled with public-interest rules that would impose requirements of educations programming and free airtime for political candidates. Multichannel News reports that Copps made the comments at a luncheon meeting of the Federal Communications Bar Association.