Comcast, broadcasters sue to stop law giving Mainers TV channel choice
Communications giant Comcast Corp. and a group of cable television broadcasters are suing to stop a Maine law from giving consumers the power to choose their TV channels.
The law, enacted as L.D. 832 and scheduled to take effect next week, would allow Mainers to purchase access to cable channels or even programs individually. Most cable TV providers such as Comcast only offer packages of channels, often requiring consumers to pay for programming they don’t want in order to obtain what they do.
The suit, filed Friday in a Bangor federal court, claims “an array of federal statutory provisions precludes Maine from dictating how cable programming is presented to consumers,” and asks for an injunction that would bar the law from taking effect.
While the law was intended to create greater choices for TV viewers, Comcast and the broadcasters say it will have the opposite effect.
“Maine’s effort to foist an ‘à la carte’ regime on these industry participants not only is unlawful, but would end up causing the very harms it seeks to avoid — namely, higher costs and reduced programming choice,” the complainants write in the filing.
The suit also claims that studies by the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Government Accountability Office “concluded that forced unbundling of all cable tiers and packages would diminish carriage opportunities for many programmers and ultimately drive many out of business, thereby curtailing choice and diminishing diversity, while also increasing programming costs for consumers and forcing many of them to lease new equipment.”
The suit names as defendants Gov. Janet Mills, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and 15 southern and mid-coast Maine municipalities served by Comcast.
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