Cable Television Industry

Here is how members of the California delegation voted in the 308-114 roll call by which the House voted Monday night to override President Bush's veto of a bill re-regulating the cable television industry. An affirmative vote is a vote to override the veto and enact the bill into law. Democrats for--Anderson, Beilenson, Brown, Condit, Dellums, Dooley, Dymally, Edwards, Lantos, Lehman, Martinez, Miller, Mineta, Panetta, Pelosi, Roybal, Stark, Torres, Waters, Waxman.

M/A-Com will sell its cable and home communications businesses, including a cable television scrambling operation in San Diego, to New York-based General Instrument for $220 million, company officials said Wednesday. The four businesses to be sold generated 24% of M/A-Com's $844 million in 1985 revenues. General Instrument, which last year reported $794 million in revenues, manufactures electronics products, including equipment for the cable television industry.

Gov. George Deukmejian has signed a bill that benefits the cable television industry even though his office announced he vetoed the measure for being unfair to other taxpayers. A spokeswoman for Deukmejian placed blame for the announcement on a clerical error made after the bill was signed late Friday, the governor's constitutional deadline for acting on 1988 legislation. The matter was reported today by the Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner.

Microsoft Corp. isn't trying to control the pipeline for delivering data, video and other services to consumers' homes, Chairman Bill Gates told cable television industry representatives. "There's no need for paranoia," Gates said to a packed audience at the opening of the National Cable Television Assn.'s annual convention. Gates gave a ringing endorsement to cable as the best way to deliver Internet, video and other new technologies into the home.

The cable television industry said Tuesday that it will provide free equipment to allow subscribers to block unwanted channels, a reaction to efforts on Capitol Hill to curb indecent programming. The offer is directed to about half the nation's 70.5 million cable subscribers who don't have cable boxes that can be programmed to block certain channels or programs. The companies agreeing to the plan include the 10 largest in the country.

The cable television industry and TV set manufacturers, to avoid imposition of federal regulations, reached an agreement on labels for digital TV sets, a move that could spur sales. The National Cable Television Assn. and the Consumer Electronics Assn. have feuded for months about labels for different features. The Federal Communications Commission, worried that imprecise labeling would lead to consumer confusion and slow the shift to digital, planned to adopt labeling rules in a few months.

Irving B. Kahn, 76, who pioneered the TelePrompTer and cable television. Named for his songwriter uncle, Irving Berlin Kahn grew up in Montclair, N.J., won a scholarship to the University of Alabama as a drum major, served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and at 27 became the youngest vice president in 20th Century Fox's history. He left the studio in 1950 to form Teleprompter Corp., developing and marketing the device that replaced cue cards for television performers.

Walt Disney Co. and the cable television industry released two studies Wednesday that fault a recent government report on the sale of cable TV channels separately rather than in packages, saying the shift would increase consumer costs. Commissioned by Disney and the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., the studies disputed a Feb. 9 Federal Communications Commission report supporting so-called a la carte channel sales.

The cable television industry, responding to concerns in Congress about violence on TV, acknowledged Wednesday that its programming is as violent as network fare and it promised to address the problem. The acknowledgment by the National Cable Television Assn., which came in the form of a study released by the industry, followed an agreement last month by the three major television networks to issue guidelines for the depiction of violence on the air.