Dimensions: 6.5'' x 9.25'' 216 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: May 1997 Hardcover ISBN: 0844740675 Price: $ 35.00 Add to Cart   Examination Copies

Vertical ownership ties between cable television programming suppliers, such as CNN, HBO, and the Discovery Channel, and multiple cable television system operators, such as Time Warner and TCI, have become extensive. Many claim that such ownership ties reduce programming diversity, restrict entry of competitors to cable, such as local telephone exchange carriers or direct broadcast satellites, or have other socially undesirable effects. In response to those claims, several provisions of the 1992 Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 restrict the behavior of vertically integrated cable firms, and in some cases the behavior of vertically integrated competitors to cable.

The authors address those and related issues from an economic perspective. They conclude to the extent that there are economic or other social problems with the cable television industry's performance, policy solutions to those problems lie not with regulatory or other constraints on vertical ownership but with reducing the horizontal market power of the multiple cable television system operators.

David H. Waterman is a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University. Andrew Weiss is an associate professor of economics at the University of Southern California.