WASHINGTON, D.C. – NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow sent the following letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioners Adelstein, Copps, McDowell and Tate.

"The marketplace is working, even before completion of the digital transition, to ensure voluntary carriage of multicast broadcast streams that offer programming likely to meet the needs and interests of cable customers.  Broadcasters’ claim – that Congress created a perpetual right to 6 MHz of bandwidth and not simply to primary video – is not what the statute says and not what the Turner Court approved.  Guaranteed cable carriage of every multicast stream of every broadcast station – without regard to whether it serves any viewer’s needs or interests – serves no public policy purpose.  It unfairly thwarts the development and availability of non-broadcast cable program networks, which have no such guarantee of carriage for even a single stream of programming.  And it forces cable operators, who spent $100 billion upgrading their facilities in the last decade to provide their customers with the most desirable array of video, voice and data services, to set aside valuable channels for services that may have no appeal at all."