Do Over!

NCTA wants the FCC to correct its recently released 2005 cable price report. "The public has the right to expect that the agency will collect and disseminate data in a way that is transparent, impartial and credible," NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow wrote in a letter to FCC chmn Kevin Martin Thurs and cc’d to Sen and House Commerce leadership. Among McSlarrow’s concerns is the decision not to disclose data showing the pricing of cable on a per-channel basis—data that would show that the price per channel has gone down over 10 years, not up. NCTA also said the FCC should use a consistent pricing metric, such as price per viewing hour, when making judgments about different services. Under a price per viewing hour model, expanded basic cable has dropped from 28.4 cents/hour in ’02 to 26.3 cents, NCTA said. The assoc says that the FCC’s conclusion that the prices for every communications service except cable have declined since ’96 is false because different metrics were used to measure different services.