Genachowski's Retransmission Approach a Winner

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski should get an award for doing nothing in the Fox-Cablevision retransmission dispute.

Don't laugh. Doing nothing is not so easy for policymakers and politicians in Washington. Most think it's their job fix everything that goes wrong in America, even something as trivial as viewers in New York and Philadelphia losing a handful of their 500 TV channels. Congress and the FCC got it right on retrans in early 1990s. They created a market where the buyers (cable and satellite operators) and sellers (the broadcasters) have more or less equal leverage. Sure, broadcasters have been able to squeeze fees out of the operators, but it has only been lately (the last five years) and it hasn't been much relative to the fees that some cable networks with a fraction of the ratings get. According to SNL Kagan, the average station is getting only 25 cents per subscriber. And when broadcasters and cable fail to reach an agreement as in the case of Fox and Cablevision, both suffer. All broadcasters should be rooting for Fox. If it gets what it's asking -- 95 cents for its two stations in New York, according to an SNL Kagan analysis -- it will set a new benchmark for broadcasters to shoot for. It will give them hope that they might eventually get their fair share of the $26 billion that cable and satellite operators now set aside for payments to programmers.