Mediacom opposed NAB’s rejection of draft legislation aimed...

alternative solutions to the problems for consumers that Rep. Eshoo and many others think are caused by the retransmission consent law as it currently operates,” said a Mediacom attorney Joseph Young in a letter to acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn’s staff. NAB’s “denial that blackouts are possible ignores reality,” the letter said. Even if a strong broadcast signal is available at a consumer’s home, “the digital transition means that he or she must, first of all, have a digital ready television set or a separate converter,” it said. To have any hope of reliable reception, the viewer will have to mount a rooftop antenna, “which both increases costs and may require senior citizens and others unable or unwilling to climb on the roof to hire someone to perform the installation,” it said. The cost of switching to a competitive multichannel video programming distributor may be higher, Mediacom said. The FCC should require that before a broadcast station licensee blocks carriage by any distributor willing to continue meaningful negotiations or submit deadlocked negotiations to binding arbitration, “the licensee must ensure that its station’s signal is available off-air to a very high percentage of households in the station’s DMA [designated market area], without any expense beyond the cost of an affordable in-home antenna,” it said.