ACT: Calif. Punts on PEG Call

According to American Community Television, California Attorney General  Kamala D. Harris has said it will wait for the FCC to weigh in on whether digital PEG channels are insufficiently accessible to the blind and deaf community.

That came in a letter to a complaint to the attorney general, according to ACT, which encouraged those complaints in its ongoing battle for easier PEG access.

"We shouldn't have to wait," said John Rocco, president of ACT, in response to the AG letter.  "The FCC has had the petition challenging the treatment of PEG channels on [AT&T's] U-verse system for almost three years and they have not acted."

According to ACT, the letter also referred to the FCC's ongoing implementation of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 as reason to hold off on a decision, vetting that ACT points out will be ongoing for a couple more years.

ACT says that the blind and vision-impaired can't access the U-Verse channels through the on-screen menus and has complained about the issue before.

AT&T countered when ACT first called for AG investigations that its programming can be "easily and quickly accessed, is high quality and offers many benefits."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.