Washington Weighs In On WABC-Cablevision Retrans Disconnect

In
the wake of Disney's decision to follow through on pulling WABC-TV from Cablevision systems, the
e-mails were flying in Washington, with calls for government to step in if
necessary to bring the parties together.

John Kerry
(D-Mass.), chairman of the Sen. Communications Subcommittee, renewed his call
for Washington to step in, as well as telling the two sides to work something
out, rather than make "collateral damage" of viewers. But he did not
put the blame on ABC, as he seemed to do in a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski last week
urging a resolution of the impasse.

In that letter
he had said he didn't think ABC should be able to pull the signal without some
FCC finding that Cablevision had bargained in bad faith.

But in Sunday's
statement, he pointed no fingers. He said that ABC had pulled the signal
because it could not agree with Cablevision on the value, and added that it is
"neither my place nor my goal to pick sides in this dispute."

Read the full story at Multichannel.com

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.