NAB Breaks Out Tin Foil Hats in Retransmission Fight

[Commentary] The National Association of Broadcasters is currently trying to convince everyone that a few pay TV companies are engaged in some sort of conspiracy to cause blackouts in order to move Congress to change retransmission consent.

The NAB claims that 89% of blackouts in the last two years have involved DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner Cable and if only those companies would work a little harder to reach resolutions with the broadcasters, there wouldn't be any blackouts. The NAB's charges are ludicrous, as anyone with even a basic understanding of how business works can attest. There is nothing more frustrating for TV consumers than blackouts so it's absurd to think that pay TV distributors would intentionally upset their customers and risk losing them. Truth is that there aren't just three companies that are justifiably calling for retrans reform. There are numerous cable, satellite and telecom companies. So the NAB can float absurd conspiracy theories and try to distract everyone from the hard truth: the retrans system is truly broken and it is now simply subsidizing expensive network programming. (Perhaps Congress should ask the broadcasters to open their books as a condition of that free spectrum.)

[Frederick is VP of public affairs at Porter Novelli, a public relations firm retained by the American Television Alliance, which is a coalition of pay TV distributors, consumer groups and independent programmers]