NCTA's Powell: Escalating Sports Costs Could Invite Government Scrutiny

National Cable and Telecommunications Association president Michael Powell warns operators, programmers and sports leagues that they need to be careful that escalating sports rights costs don't blow up their business model and prompt government intervention.

In an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators series, Powell was asked by Lynn Stanton of Telecommunications Reports what would happen when sports programming costs exceed the ability of consumers to subsidize them. Powell called it the "billion-dollar question." He said operators are facing the choice of either absorbing the cost, which he said they have been doing to some degree, or passing it on to consumers still trying to recover from a painful recession.