CBS' Franks: Some Distributors Trying to Game Retransmission System

In written testimony in advance of the July 24 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Cable Act at 20, CBS chief retransmission negotiator Martin Franks says that the Cable Act of 1992 was one of the "great Washington public policy accomplishments" of the past 20 years, citing as an example that almost all of the some 15,000 retrans negotiations every three years are completed successfully. Those that haven't, he suggests, can be traced in part to a "handful" of distributors trying to game the system to their own advantage. For CBS' part, he points out, all of its retransmission deals in the past six years have been concluded "without incident." Franks argues that to the degree that impasses are more frequent, it is because a handful of distributors believe that disruptions could help them advance their public policy goals by making "a working model look broken."