BOSTON (CN) A Maine law designed to prevent cable companies from relegating public-access channels to “digital Siberia” came under attack Thursday from a group of cable operators who told the First Circuit that it violates federal requirements.
“Cable operators don’t like these channels because they don’t make any money from them, and they’ve done everything possible to make them unpopular so maybe someday they won’t have to carry them anymore,” Christopher Taub of the Maine Attorney General’s Office told the court.
“They make them hard to find and hard to watch,” he complained.
The Maine law says that cable companies have to give public-access stations low channel numbers, summarize their programs in channel guides and broadcast them in high-definition if the program was recorded in HD.