The Federal Communicatons Commission voted 5-0 to extend its "viewability rule" for six months.  

The rule requires cable operators to ensure that all of their customers have access to local must-carry TV signals until Dec. 12.

The rule was slated to expire automatically Tuesday. Without it, cable’s analog TV subscribers will have to use digital-to-analog converter boxes to continue receiving broadcast TV must-carry signals.

The decision -- proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski -- comes as a victory for cable operators, but a defeat for small independent and foreign-language broadcasters, who fear that without the rule they will lose a good percentage of their audiences. 

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President Obama was already in Hollywood, so he took the opportunity early on Thursday to squeeze in a little extra face time with some of his biggest supporters: celebrities.

This time, Obama held a morning meeting with 25 members of Hollywood's younger set -- including Jessica Alba, "Glee's" Dianna Agron, Zachary Quinto, Jeremy Renner, Zach Braff and Ian Somerhalder -- to talk politics at the Beverly Hilton hotel. And they didn't hesitate to pose for photo-ops with POTUS while they were at it. 

Several from among the president's famous guests took to Twitter to spread the word about the meeting later that day, thus doing their part to help his re-...

President Obama made his second campaign stop in Los Angeles in as many months on Wednesday, capitalizing on the goodwill he gained from his recent marriage-equality endorsement with two fund-raisers geared toward the LGBT community.

The first event drew around 600 supporters to the Beverly Wilshire hotel, while the second was a much smaller affair at the Beverly Hills home of “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy.

At the Beverly Wilshire, the president stressed the progress his administration made over his first term and cased out the challenges ahead. “I could not be prouder of the work that we’ve done on behalf of the LGBT community,” Obama said, following a series of...

Broadcast industry executives are turning up the heat in their campaign to retain a Federal Communications Commission rule that requires cable TV operators to ensure that all of their customers have access to local must-carry signals.

Unless it takes action, the FCC's so-called three-year-old “viewability rule” is set to automatically expire on June 12.

The rule ensures that all 58 million cable TV subscribers have access to local must-carry signals -- not just the 46 million who subscribe to digital cable.

Eliminating the viewability rule would severely undermine the viewership of independent, religious and foreign-language stations that rely on the regulation to reach all cable viewers,...