Broadcasters Say DirecTV Retrans Rate Claim Doesn't Hold Water
DirecTV's claim that the retransmission rates being sought by a group of small-market broadcasters is inordinately high doesn't square with those rates being relatively low compared with what those broadcasters are getting in deals with other multichannel video programming distributors,…
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seven broadcasters said in a filing posted Monday in FCC docket 12-1. The DBS company's "self-admitted ability to secure rates across the entire U.S. market that are far below those paid by such a wide swath of other MVPDs with which [the seven have] recently negotiated provides prima facie evidence of massive DirecTV market leverage," the group of commonly controlled broadcasters said. Blackhawk Broadcasting, Bristlecone Broadcasting, Broadcasting Licenses, Eagle Creek Broadcasting of Laredo, Mountain Licenses, Northwest Broadcasting and Stainless Broadcasting last month filed a complaint with the FCC, asking it to step into the stuck negotiations and force DirecTV to show numbers to back up its estimations of the market value of the group's signals. Such a disclosure would violate agreements with those broadcasters, DirecTV said (see 1507010069). That DirecTV has such market leverage "makes it plain that this dispute is anything but a simple disagreement over rates and raises far more questions than it answers" as well as "raises the stakes" for the pending takeover by AT&T, which would give DirecTV even more negotiating power, the Northwest group said.