The Cable Act at 20

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing exploring the future of online video. The Committee considered the impact of the Cable Television and Consumer Protection Act of 1992 on the television marketplace and consumers twenty years after its passage.

The only thing new in the debate over the Cable Act—the 1992 legislation that established how cable and satellite companies negotiate over carriage of local TV stations—is the hype surrounding it.

Few issues make constituents write to members of Congress like losing access to their favorite TV or cable shows and, up until now, lawmakers have been all talk and no action. But a backlash to the blackouts may be coming.

While broadcast and cable witnesses focused on the retransmission consent/must-carry regime in their written testimony, Consumer Federal of America's Mark Cooper is focusing on what he says is the threat of cable market power over online video distribution.

Consumers seem ready to take action when it comes to more frequent TV blackouts of their favorite networks -- and most of that activity comes with their primary multi-TV network seller.

In written testimony in advance of the July 24 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Cable Act at 20, CBS chief retransmission negotiator Martin Franks says that the Cable Act of 1992 was one of the "great Washington public policy accomplishments" of the past 20 years, citing as an example that almost all of the some 15,000 retrans negotiations every three years are completed successfully.

In written testimony in advance of the July 24 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Cable Act at 20, American Cable Association chair Colleen Abdoulah says that the 1992 Cable Act is outdated and due for an overhaul, citing hundreds of smaller cable operators who have gone out of business due primarily to programming costs.

National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith plans to tell his former Senate Commerce Committee colleagues that local TV has "immense value," a value tied to their ability to negotiate "fair value" for their signals via retransmission consent.

In advance of the July 24 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Cable Act at 20, ABC affiliates told Congress that if they are not allowed to have a dual revenue stream -- advertising and retransmission cash -- more big ticket sports programming will move to cable.

This week’s Senate Commerce committee hearing on the Cable Act—the law often blamed for blackouts on cable and satellite TV—may not be the clash of the titans, but it will be close.

Mediacom chairman Rocco Commisso has committed to freezing the "published rates" for the cable operator's most popular video service tiers -- limited and expanded basic -- for two years if the cable and broadcast network/channel owners agree to freeze their fees.

The NBC and CBS affiliates have both sent letters to the Senate Commerce Committee making their pitch for preserving the must-carry/retransmission consent regime.

Former Disney and News Corp. executive Preston Padden plans to tell the Senate Commerce Committee next week that it should "follow the roadmap" of the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act (S. 2008) that would repeal the compulsory copyright license, retransmission, must-carry and other ownership rules -- but scuttling the compulsory license needs to come first.