Time for Congress to Reform Cable TV Laws

[Commentary] With Washington (DC) divided on a number key policy fronts, now is perhaps the perfect time for Congress to focus on an issue that has bipartisan support: Overhauling the 1992 Cable Act and scrapping many badly outdated video regulations. A great place to start is with the requirement called the basic tier buy-through. This regulation mandates that cable subscribers buy all local TV stations prior to accessing any other video service offered by their cable company. Federal law is embarrassingly out of touch and needs to catch up with the market. Enactment of an idea called Local Choice would go far in that direction.

For starters, it would topple government-imposed TV station buy-through barriers and would substitute government-dictated outcomes with free-market solutions rooted in a preference for regulatory parity. An alternative approach to Local Choice would not involve a new law abolishing retransmission consent. The Federal Communications Commission could use its existing authority to hold that TV signal blackouts -- regardless of who initiated them -- would violate the current legal requirement for TV stations and cable operators to negotiate in good faith. Under this proposal, the FCC could order continued signal carriage pursuant to terms in the most recently expired contract while at the same time sending both the cable operator and the TV station into binding arbitration. Although this process might slow the soaring cost of broadcaster retransmission consent fees, it would eliminate blackouts that TV stations are fond of staging, or like threatening to stage, just moments before the start of marquee events like the World Series, the Super Bowl, March Madness or the Academy Awards.

[Matthew Polka is president and CEO for the American Cable Association]