Monday, March 01, 2010

Cable Industry Backing Must-Carry Challenge

The NCTA, and major programmers like discovery, are supporting Cablevision's court challenge of the must-carry rules.

Given the major technology and marketplaces changes that have occurred since must-carry was narrowly upheld in the Turner case, the arguments for eliminating must-carry appear stronger than they've ever been.

Especially when retrans consent has become the pathway of choice for broadcast carriage on cable, the mandated carriage of broadcast channels in a time of digital telecast, increasing availability of content from wired, wireless and online content providers (including major broadcast networks), the policy and legal justification for must-carry no longer holds.

Traditional broadcast economics are under attack and strain from new media and not from any assumed bottleneck of cable carriage decisions. The First Amendment and diversity of content distribution will both be better served by eliminating must-carry.

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