Bounce TV Cofounder Tells Senate to Reject DeMint Bill

Add Bounce TV cofounder Martin Luther King III to the list of broadcasters not eager for the Congress to take out the deregulatory broom otherwise known as the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act (S. 2008).

That bill, offered up by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), would sweep away the retrans/must-carry regime as well as the compulsory copyright license and cable and broadcast ownership regulations. In a letter to Sen. Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) dated Aug. 3, King said it was "critical" that Rockefeller's committee reject the bill. Currently the Senate is on August recess, and nothing is likely to happen on that front until the next Congress anyway. But the issue or major FCC regulation reform continues to be on many minds in Washington, including Rockefeller's at a recent hearing on the 1992 Cable Act at which the DeMint bill was a topic of discussion.