In comments to be submitted to the Federal Communications Commission today, Media Access Project (MAP) supported proposed reforms to the Commission’s retransmission consent rules – the regulations that govern negotiations between broadcasters and entities that retransmit broadcast signals, such as cable operators, satellite providers, and telco video services such as FiOS.

In the filing, MAP asked the Commission to create rules that would preserve the status quo in programming negotiations, as well as to generate binding arbitration procedures or other methods for analyzing the reasonableness of rates and terms demanded in such negotiations. MAP also called for renewed FCC consideration of practices by programming providers to bundle popular programs with less well known offerings, demanding that distributors agree to carry the entire bundle.

The filing supported and built on a March 2010 petition seeking changes to these rules, filed by a group of programming distributors including Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, DIRECTV, Dish Network, Verizon, organizations representing small cable operators and telephone companies, and public interest groups. That petition proposed reforms to the dispute resolution procedures that would take effect when retransmission consent disputes arise between broadcasters and cable companies, as in the case of the Cablevision-ABC standoff during this year’s Academy Awards.

Today, MAP went beyond the points made in that petition by also calling for reforms to the FCC’s program access and program carriage rules that set the ground rules for negotiations to carry non-broadcast programming. If the current retransmission consent regime is “broken,” as the petition argues, so are the markets for independent cable programming and channels controlled by incumbent cable operators themselves, who frequently engage in the same sort of program tying arrangements as do broadcasters.

“The reforms proposed in the petition are necessary, but not just for retransmission consent negotiations over broadcast programming rights,” said Matt Wood, MAP Associate Director. “Consumers lose out when any programming provider uses its leverage and market power to bundle programming together or outright deny certain channels to rival program distributors. Such practices invariably drive up consumer prices, limit competition, reduce the diversity of programming available, and harm independent programmers. The Commission should act swiftly to take up the reforms proposed in the petition, but should not ignore public interest harms caused by such tactics outside of the broadcast context.”

MAP is a non-profit, public interest law firm working to protect free expression, innovation, and economic growth by promoting low cost, universal access to media outlets and communications services, and encouraging vibrant public discourse.

Read the comments here.