State broadcaster associations from all 50 states savaged...

be sent Wednesday to the proposal’s authors -- Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., who had circulated the proposal earlier this month. The letter is the latest volley in a lobbying war with the American Television Alliance, a group of several pay-TV companies that launched a national advertising campaign in favor of Local Choice in recent days (CD Aug 27 p7). The American Television Alliance has now posted its newspaper (http://bit.ly/1qLc4zn) and radio (http://bit.ly/1tWlWJP) ads on its website. “If adopted, the proposal will unjustifiably eliminate television broadcasting’s longstanding statutory right of retransmission consent and unfairly single out the free, over-the-air, local television broadcast industry for mandatory ‘a la carte’ treatment,” the state broadcaster associations said, saying Local Choice “will very negatively impact television broadcasters and all of the nation’s viewers.” They “strongly oppose” including Local Choice as part of Commerce’s Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization legislation, expected to be unveiled in September. Local Choice “will destroy localism, including the backbone of our nation’s Emergency Alert System, by denying fair compensation to broadcasters without providing consumers, who continue to complain loudly about the monthly cost of pay-television service, with any meaningful choice or relief,” the broadcasters said. Local Choice would mean “less resources to invest in newsrooms, journalists, and local programming and perhaps even fewer broadcaster outlets to cover local affairs and emergencies in the future” and it would “chill the willingness of broadcasters to cover controversial issues of public importance.” It could chill “the journalistic and editorial decisions of every station” and throw “the economics of the nation’s local television broadcast system into chaos,” the letter said. Mandated a la carte pricing would “increase prices, decrease programming diversity, and result in fewer -- not more -- choices for consumers,” state broadcasters said, worrying it could “upend the network-affiliate relationship with potentially devastating consequences for the networks, for their affiliates and for the financial markets.” There’s also a good chance Local Choice “will likely become the slippery ‘a la carte’ slope that broadly upsets a vibrant and functioning video marketplace.” The state broadcaster associations listed several questions and considerations, asking about what would happen to existing retrans deals and how pay-TV providers would be held accountable. They asked about how Local Choice would affect reverse compensation agreements, which are tied to retrans fees. They plan to visit Senate Commerce members in Washington and in home offices to “further demonstrate our strong concerns,” they added.