Cable TV

Robert W. Crandall; Harold Furchtgott-Roth

doi:10.5771/9780815706960

Summary

In 1984, Congress simultaneously eliminated state-local regulation of cable television rates and banned telephone companies from offering cable service in their own franchise areas. Five years later, the General Accounting Office discovered that basic cable rates had risen more than four times as rapidly as the overall consumer price level since rate deregulation. As a result, Congress began to move to reimpose cable rate regulation once again, finally succeeding (over President Bush's veto) in 1992.

In this book, Robert Crandall and Harold Furchtgott-Roth examine the case of reregulating cable television and find that viewers gained far more than they lost during the brief deregulatory era because cable services expanded so rapidly in the deregulated environment. Moreover, they show that new technologies, such as direct-broadcast satellites, are likely to provide considerable market discipline for cable operators in the next few years, weakening any case for rate regulation. Given regulation's history of impeding innovation, they conclude that economic welfare is more likely to be enhanced by policies aimed at encouraging new entry into video services than by rate regulation.

Search publication

Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8157-1609-9
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8157-0696-0
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 161
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
1. The Early History No access
2. From Community Access Television to Cablecasting No access
3. The Changing Structure of Cable Television No access
4. Cable Television and the Information Superhighway No access
5. Cable Growth through New Services No access
6. The Outlook No access
1. The Rationale for Rate Regulation No access
2. Regulating the Cable "Monopoly" No access
3. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 No access
4. Regulation before 1984 No access
5. The 1992 Cable Act No access
6. Regulating the Competitors No access
7. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 No access
8. Conclusion No access
1. Consumer Demand for Cable Service No access
2. A Multinomial Logit Model of the Demand for Cable Service No access
3. Changes in Consumer Welfare No access
4. The Change in Economic Welfare since 1983–84 No access
5. Price Sensitivity of Demand No access
6. Has Deregulation Improved Consumer Welfare? No access
7. Deregulation and Capital Investment in Cable Television No access
8. The Exercise of Market Power No access
9. Conclusion No access
1. Cable Company Common Equities No access
2. Cable Company Acquisition Prices No access
3. Subscriber Rates No access
4. Output and Program Quality No access
5. Investment in Cable Companies No access
6. Conclusion No access
1. Competition among Cable Companies No access
2. Competition from Telephone Companies No access
3. Competition from Direct Broadcast Satellites No access
4. Competition from Wireless Cable No access
5. One-Way Video or the Information Superhighway? No access
6. Effects on Cable System Equities and Acquisition Prices No access
7. Conclusion No access
1. Competition as a Substitute for Rate Regulation No access
2. Coping with Regulation No access
3. Conclusion No access
Appendix A: Estimation of Demand for Cable Television Based on Cable System Data No access Pages 107 - 122
Appendix B: Estimation of Demand for Cable Television Based on Household Data No access Pages 123 - 156
1. A No access
2. B No access
3. C No access
4. D No access
5. E No access
6. F No access
7. G No access
8. H No access
9. I No access
10. J No access
11. K No access
12. L No access
13. M No access
14. N No access
15. O No access
16. P No access
17. R No access
18. S No access
19. T No access
20. U No access
21. V No access
22. W No access
23. Z No access