Airwaves Sizzle Over Bill to Regulate Cable TV Rates

The cable TV and broadcasting industries are squaring off in a multimillion-dollar public relations battle aimed at drawing consumers into the fray over proposed price controls on cable TV rates.

Viewers are being bombarded with TV spots concerning the cable bill, which is expected to be approved by the House and Senate next week. President Bush is expected to veto the bill, and it is uncertain whether there are enough votes in Congress for an override.

In the latest salvo, the National Assn. of Broadcasters has sent a memo to its members urging them to use their news departments to produce on-air stories “that give the lie” to cable’s claims. “Tell it like it is!” the memo says. “Generate the news stories!”

Cable industry lobbyists call the memo a blatant attempt by broadcasters to use their news departments to generate anti-cable stories. Some TV news executives have also criticized the memo.

“It looks like a disguised effort to slant the news. I find this tactic very disturbing,” said David Bartlett, president of the Radio-TV News Directors Assn. in Washington.

The NAB said the memo was no different than routine briefing papers it sends to more than 200 print journalists. Despite the strong wording, the group also denies that the memo pressures TV journalists to take a partisan stand.

“We’re asking (TV journalists) to cover both sides of the story,” said Lynn McReynolds, a spokeswoman for the NAB. “Broadcasters have traditionally shied away from covering stories that affect them.”

But Robert Kalthoff, government relations chair for NBC affiliates and one of the six broadcasters who signed off on the memo, acknowledged that the memo may have gone too far. “In hindsight, I wish it had been written a different way.”

Kalthoff and other broadcasters said they are fighting a hard-ball public relations campaign against the well-heeled cable TV industry.

Indeed, few businesses have the cable TV industry’s resources for getting out their message. Anti-cable TV bill messages are being stuffed into monthly cable TV bills and being carried on a dozen different cable TV networks such as CNN and The Discovery Channel.

The bill, which is expected to get final approval by the House and Senate next week, includes provisions to regulate the most basic level of service such as local over-the-air channels, public TV stations and public access channels. Left largely unregulated would be channels such as CNN, ESPN, HBO and Showtime.

The cable industry most objects to provisions in the bill that would require it to pay to carry local TV stations and force cable networks to make their programming available to competitors, such as satellite services and microwave distributors.

Cable executives said these extra provisions would have the effect of raising prices.

Not so, said cable opponent Gene Kimmelman, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America: “They have no factual basis for claiming this bill will drive up cable prices. They’re using scare tactics to confuse the issues.”

Broadcasters claim that the cable industry has been putting together “front organizations” posing as grass-roots consumer activist groups urging local citizens to defeat the cable bill. Telegrams sent out by two so-called consumer groups in Pennsylvania and Georgia were actually paid for by the National Cable TV Assn.

Also working to defeat the bill are the Hollywood studios, which argue that as the copyright holders to programs aired by broadcasters they are entitled to a share of the new money cable systems would pay to carry local TV stations. The studios were defeated this week in their efforts to have “copyright reform” provisions inserted during conference of the bill.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said Hollywood studios will lose millions of dollars in overseas revenue during negotiations over foreign rights to films and TV programs. “We will be shrunk and crippled in negotiations abroad,” he said.