Florida Reps Push Multicasting Must-Carry

[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
A dozen Florida representatives, eight Republicans and five Democrats, have sent a letter to ranking House Commerce Committee members Joe Barton (R-TX.) and John Dingell (D-MI), asking that they include a multicasting must-carry provision in any telecommunications law introduced this year. A rewrite of the 1996 Telecommunications Act is planned for markup in the next couple of weeks. Multicast must-carry would require cable to carry all of a broadcasters free digital signals. Cable counters that it should only have to carry a digital replica of the analog channel, a reading of the law that the FCC has upheld, which is why broadcasters are seeking help from Congress. The legislators said that Florida is home to the country's "only general market independent broadcast network" (i, formerly Pa TV), as well as "many smaller, independent broadcasters, including locally focused, and several minority broadcast companies [Telemundo, for one, though that is owned by NBC U]." They argued the state is heavily dependent on niche programming from those small and independent sources. "Unfortunately," they argue, "broadcasters not associated with a multi-media conglomerate will be unable to leverage other assets to secure multicast carriage of their signals in the digital environment and our state will lose important sources of local news, information, and entertainment."
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