Franchise Players

[SOURCE: Governing.com, AUTHOR: Christopher Swope]
[Commentary] The U.S. Conference of Mayors is meeting in Washington this week. The big issue is about how to handle local television franchises. The Baby Bells, who aren't such babies any more, are rolling out video services to compete with cable TV. The telecoms don't want to pursue franchise agreements with each city they serve, as cable companies have done for years. Rather, they'd like to see franchising on a statewide basis (as Texas passed last year) or wrap a national-level franchise agreement into a re-write of the federal Telecommunications Act. The mayors are irate about this, for several reasons. First, cities collect a good bit of revenue from their video franchises. Second, in return for those franchises, cities often negotiate public-interest perks such as public access channels. But perhaps their biggest issue is really a matter of regulatory control. Mayors want some recourse when Big Telecom comes to town and digs up roads to lay their fiber optic lines. They don't want to have to go to the state capitol or to Washington to get any resulting potholes fixed.
http://governing.typepad.com/13thfloor/2006/01/franchise_playe.html