Local Choice received more heat after the Senate...
Local Choice received more heat after the Senate Commerce Committee leadership’s decision to include it in their Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization bill (CD Sept 8 p1). Economists Kevin Caves and Hal Singer wrote a letter Monday (http://bit.ly/1weizzd)…
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to committee leaders saying Local Choice, which would overhaul retransmission consent rules to end TV blackouts, “would likely harm cable customers by raising the price of their cable bills.” The letterhead is marked Economists Inc., a company with clients including ABC, CBS, Comcast and many others. NAB asked Singer to write the letter, he told us. Local Choice “singles out the content creators that appeal to the broadest swath of American households for discriminatory treatment,” Caves and Singer said of the broadcast a la carte proposal. “If broadcasters are forced to accept narrower distribution on the cable lineup, the odds are that the license fees for broadcast networks would increase, perversely leading to higher cable bills for the majority of Americans.” A footnote to the letter mentioned that NAB had commissioned the economists to conduct a study recently on sharing agreements and advertising but that “opinions expressed here are our own.” Ad groups also blasted Local Choice on substance and process. “We are in strong opposition to the proposal,” Association of National Advertisers Executive Vice President-Government Relations Dan Jaffe told us, saying his group and the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the American Advertising Federation were sending a joint letter to the committee (http://bit.ly/1ArNF70). Local Choice is “clearly premature” and “not an insignificant step,” likely to hurt advertisers, broadcasters and consumers, Jaffe said. “[Committee staff] have not reached out to us at all.” But Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said the Senate Commerce Committee legislation “marks an important step forward in advancing this must-pass legislation that will ensure uninterrupted access to broadcast television programming for more than one million satellite television subscribers.” Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Latta praised the Satellite Television Access and Viewer Rights Act for including “a provision to eliminate the [set-top box] integration ban, similar to the one I sponsored in the House, and I look forward to a conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate bills,” he said in a statement Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1s5klm0).