Background: Public Knowledge is one of 14 parties asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to consider changing the rules governing the terms and conditions under which broadcast stations are carried on cable networks. Others asking the Commission to come up with new rules for so-called “retransmission consent” include Time Warner Cable, Verizon, DirecTV, Dish Networks, American Cable Association, New America Foundation and others.

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“Public Knowledge is pleased to join with a broad coalition of companies and non-profit groups to ask the FCC to establish new rules to protect cable customers. That is our only interest. The petition to the Commission shows that the current rules no longer work. The recent dispute between Disney and Cablevision is only the latest proof of a broken system in which consumers suffer while big companies fight.

“The petition proposes some rule changes, including allowing TV channels to remain on the air during a broadcaster-cable dispute, and banning the tying of carriage of broadcast channels to other programming, including Web-based programming. It also proposes arbitration to resolve disputes.

“We support these and other measures. I testified before the House Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee in February, 2009, asking for a complete overhaul of the retransmission consent mechanism, and suggested some specific items, transparency for all retransmission consent contracts, and a requirement that retransmission consent licenses be on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.”