Gordon Smith: Free TV Doesn't Mean For Cable

At the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, NAB Chairman Gordon Smith took aim at cable operators in defense of retransmission payments.

He called their channels "cable stations," and said they get paid for their content, and should get paid. But so should broadcasters, he said, drawing the parallel. "Stations deserve the right to negotiate for compensation of their programming. And we know that the system works, because thousands of agreements have been successfully negotiated over the years, with a success rate of over 99 percent." "Some pay-TV companies, however, want to pay nothing or only a pittance for local stations' signals - even though local content and network programming offered by broadcasters are the ones viewers watch most." Smith said that when he is talking about free TV, he means free to viewers, "not to multi-billion dollar corporations that sell subscriptions on the backs of our content."