ACA Renews Call for NCTC Qualifying as Buying Group

The American Cable Association is pushing to amend program access rules so the National Cable Television Cooperative would qualify as a buying group. ACA President Matt Polka -- in a meeting with Chairman Ajit Pai's chief of staff, Matthew Berry, and aide Alison Nemeth -- said a 2013 program access amendment order tentatively concluded the buying group definition should be updated as ACA is asking, recounted a filing posted Friday in docket 12-68. Thus the agency should update its buying group definition so NCTC would qualify, it said. ACA periodically has lobbied the FCC on the buying group request (see 1410240046 and 1507020018) and faced programmer pushback (see 1509210047).