NAB STRENGTH IS ITS ‘UMBRELLA APPROACH’—FRITTS
LAS VEGAS -- NAB Pres. Edward Fritts addressed split between Big 4 TV networks and their affiliates head-on here Mon. at opening session of Assn.’s convention, expressing confidence that it would come out as strong as ever with its “umbrella approach” to broadcast issues in Washington. Because of that split, 3 TV networks have withdrawn from NAB but umbrella approach is “our strength, a strength that has given us many victories over the years,” he said. NAB, he said, now faces “added challenge of division within our own ranks. Rather than focusing 100% on meeting challenges from without, all of a sudden we are challenging ourselves from within.” In losing NBC, Fox and CBS TV networks and their owned stations, “we are neither diminished nor demoralized,” he said.
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For “those who worry about the future of [NAB] and our industry… I can tell you that I have total confidence in the future of the NAB,” Fritts told his audience. “We will continue to be a vibrant, aggressive advocate for free broadcasting.” He said neither NAB’s mission to defend free, over-air broadcasting “nor our credibility is about to disappear,” he said. Fritts took opportunity to “publicly… thank ABC for remaining with us… We value you standing side-by-side with us.” (Note: Network- affiliate split was very evident in Las Vegas this week, with affiliates holding their own meetings and Network Affiliates’ Stations Alliance, which has asked FCC to open inquiry into alleged “illegal” practices by networks, meeting Mon. afternoon after our deadline.)
On other issues, Fritts said Rep. Dingell (D-Mich.) was “absolutely right” when he said “barriers to DTV transition may be ’too great to overcome without additional government intervention.'” TV stations, Fritts said, are committed to digital transmissions but there are 3 “obstacles standing in the consumers’ path” that must be addressed by govt.: (1) “Cable gatekeepers” must be required to carry local stations’ digital and analog signals during transition. (2) Manufacturers must put digital tuners in ever TV set. (3) Issue of DTV-cable “interoperability must be resolved.” In earlier interview with NAB Daily News, Fritts said millions of dollars already invested by TV stations “could be for naught if the cable industry continues using its gatekeeper clout to thwart the consumer.”
Fritts labeled McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which has passed Senate and is awaiting House action, “a clever means for politicians to buy even more air time for their negative ads” but putting more restrictions on lowest unit rate charges of stations: “What’s happened here is that the politicians have voted to give themselves the cheapest rates during the most valuable time slots… They have granted themselves special privileges unavailable to the fast-food restaurant or the [local] auto dealership.”
Keynote speaker MPAA Pres. Jack Valenti said broadcasting now was “confronting the millennium of communications. It is a daunting confrontation” involving cable, wireless and fiber and “we are bombarded with felicities, an avalanche of information, overwhelmed by a tapestry of fragments, buried under data, chat rooms, millions of Web sites, hundreds of channels, all conveyed to our homes.” He saw major threats to First Amendment in new environment as “too many college presidents and administrators sit by mute, fearful, hesitant, even approving, as they watch the slow undoing” of First Amendment guarantees. “It’s not easy to be a First Amendment advocate,” Valenti said. “You must allow that which you may judge to be meretricious, squalid and without redeeming value to enter the marketplace.”
As for future, Valenti said that “in the White House, in the Congress and among the law firms and lobbyists… no one knows anything about the future.” While the computer is “the smartest piece of technology ever devised… it cannot predict human behavior.” As for network-affiliate problems, he advised adversaries: “When you get into a corporate, political or creative struggle, never get personal.”
Meanwhile, Home Recording Rights Coalition warned against encrypting broadcast programming or limiting recording of over-air programming. Coalition Chmn. Gary Shapiro, pres. of CEA, said limiting access of DTV programming would slow DTV transition and “make orphans of the DTV receivers already in consumers’ hands.” He compared such proposals with 1980s effort to limit VCR recording of TV programming, which was rejected by U.S. Supreme Court in 1984. Coalition said it recognized concerns about Internet redistribution of TV programming, but said that didn’t justify limiting consumer rights.