Conservative Group Asks Congress Not to Scrap Retransmission in Regulation Reform Bills

The American Conservative Union has asked Congress to oppose portions of House and Senate deregulatory bills that would scrap retransmission consent.

ACU, whose board includes Grover Norquist and former Hewlett-Packer CEO Carly Fiorina, said that the retrans marketplace is functioning and that "stripping away" compensation for use of the broadcast signal the government would "be tipping the scales heavily to the side of the pay-TV companies." "Despite what you might hear, under the present system there is no epidemic of service interruptions that adversely affect consumers and cause them to miss widely-viewed events like the Super Bowl," said the group. "In fact this is a marketplace in which over 99 percent of negotiations are settled with no service interruptions."

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) last December introduced the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act in Senate. The sweeping and unlikely-to-pass legislation would throw out the retrans regime and local ownership rules. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) introduced a House version of the bill.