Time Warner Cable said the FCC should create...

practice. “There simply is no legal or policy justification for such collusive negotiations,” said TWC. “This anti-competitive practice drives up retransmission consent fees and increases the risks and incidence of programming blackouts, thus imposing significant harms on consumers.” TWC accused NAB of hypocrisy, pointing to instances when broadcasters objected to joint negotiation by other broadcasters, and attacked NAB claims that lower retrans fees would not lead to lower fees for consumers. “While NAB declares that there is no evidence that reducing retransmission consent fees would lower consumers’ bills, that again ignores the record evidence that fees are passed through to consumers and are a direct cause of the higher bills about which consumers have been complaining,” said TWC. The cable operator also blamed “the current regulatory framework” for rising retransmission fees, saying it “exacerbates, rather than curbs, Big Four broadcast stations’ market power by guaranteeing carriage on the basic tier in rate-regulated systems, forcing consumers to purchase the basic tier as a prerequisite to accessing any other programming services, and enforcing anticompetitive territorial-exclusivity agreements.” “Time Warner Cable’s filing is based on a notion that the public and policymakers believe that small and medium-market local TV stations have as much market clout as the second largest cable company in America,” NAB said in response. “That is a fantasy that just won’t fly, particularly given Time Warner Cable’s decades-long abusive treatment of consumers.”