Broadcast station owners don’t pay anything for their...

Broadcast station owners don’t pay anything for their spectrum licenses to the federal government on behalf of U.S. citizens, who own the airwaves, Mediacom said in an ex parte filing in docket 10-71 (http://bit.ly/LeEQui). The filing is a response to a Navigant study commissioned by NAB saying nearly all TV station owners paid market value for their licenses privately (CD Jan 22 p11). “Besides collecting billions in straight-to-the-bottom-line retrans fees on top of the billions in operating profits they enjoy while they own their stations, broadcasters who sell pocket billions more for spectrum they do not own and have no right to transfer without the consent of the public’s steward, the FCC.” Taxpayers who actually own the spectrum get nothing, it said. Mediacom also included its letter to Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other lawmakers asking Congress to direct the commission to use its authority over license grants, renewals and transfers “to ensure that private parties do not appropriate solely to themselves the significant value generated by transfers of licenses of publicly-owned airwaves,” it said.