TV broadcasters plugging retransmission consent revenue into their budgets for 2009 and beyond, take note.

Cable operators will be making another charge in Washington next year to undermine the ability of TV stations to negotiate for retrans payments.

"The cable guys will use everything they can to weaken the retransmission consent process," says one broadcast lobbyist

"Broadcasters need to be on guard," warns another.

Leading the charge will be the American Cable Association, a trade group representing small cable operators.

But it will not be alone, according to NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton. "This has always been an issue for the giant cable monopolists that want a free ride. Comcast and Time Warner have been solidly behind this."

Earlier cable assaults on retrans have produced little, but ACA President Matthew Polka remains optimistic.

"Hopefully with a new Congress, a new administration and a new FCC there may be a greater appetite for looking at the overall landscape of the communications industry."

The cable operators wants to relax restrictions that now bar operators from importing TV signals from adjacent markets.

Without the tight restrictions, cable operators will have much greater leverage in retrans negotiations with local network affiliates. If the operators cannot make a deal, they can import the affiliate of the same network from the market next door.

With that goal in mind, the cable lobby is expected to attack on two fronts.

The principal one will be Congress as it takes up renewal of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA), legislation that regulates carriage of broadcast TV signals by the satellite TV operators.

Because the current law expires at the end of 2009, the renewal is considered "must" legislation.

"This is a bill that has to move next year. Anything and everything you think of is going to be put on this bill," says one broadcast lawyer.

The other line of attack will come through the FCC.

The agency provided the anti-retrans forces with an opening last December when it said it would open a rulemaking to consider whether to allow cable operators to carry non-local TV stations.

Under SHVERA, satellite operators are granted a compulsory copyright license that allows them to retransmit local and distant TV stations. The importation of those distant signals, however, is severely restricted.

The commerce and judiciary committees in both houses of Congress have jurisdiction over the legislation, giving cable and broadcast lobbyists plenty of opportunities to meddle with it.

Certain to become part of the SHVERA debate is a House bill (H.R. 2821) introduced by Congressman Mike Ross (D-Ark.).

The measure would permit cable and satellite operators to offer subscribers broadcast TV signals from adjacent markets under certain circumstances.

It is aimed at placating viewers along state borders who are now stuck in TV markets that are centered in a neighboring state, but who prefer to watch news and sports programming from an in-state market.

Ross says he is thinking of his Arkansas constituents along the Louisiana border who now have to watch Louisiana TV stations.

"Arkansans want to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks," he says, "and my bill will give those who live on or near the border of another station the ability to watch the Hogs — not the LSU Tigers."

The Ross bill would direct the FCC to repeal its network nonduplication, syndicated exclusivity and sports blackout rules in the affected markets and eliminate the retransmission consent requirements in those markets.

With such changes in force, broadcasters in affected markets would lose much of their retransmission consent leverage. Cable and satellite operators unwilling to pay the local station's price would simply pick up a signal next door without even having to ask for retransmission consent.

"Congressman Ross has done a great service to highlight this issue and the need for reform," says ACA's Polka.

Consumers shouldn't be denied access to in-state channels simply because of some ``arbitrary definition of a broadcast marketplace," he says.

As now written, the Ross bill could affect hundreds of TV stations where a portion of their DMA is located in an adjacent state.

That's bad and it could get worse, broadcast lobbyists say.

During the congressional debate over SHEVRA next year, they fear, cable will not only try to attach the Ross bill to SHEVRA, but also try to broaden its scope to include more markets and more stations.

"We're very concerned about importing distant signals into markets that are by law supposed to be served by local television stations," says NAB's Wharton.

The debate on SHVERA may actually kick off next week.

As directed by SHVERA, the Copyright Office is expected to release a report on June 30 evaluating many aspects of the compulsory copyright license that permits cable and satellite operators to carry broadcast signals.

Meanwhile, ACA has started making its case for undermining broadcasters' retrans leverage at the FCC.

Perhaps taking its cue from the Ross legislation, the agency last December said it planned to open a proceeding aimed at ensuring "that all cable and satellite subscribers have access to television broadcast stations licensed to communities within the viewers' home state."

ACA, in comments filed with FCC earlier this month, encouraged such a rulemaking.

The FCC "must investigate how current retransmission consent practices restrict cable customers' access to important regional and local programming," the ACA filing says.

"Presently, the ‘Big Four' broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox) and their affiliates prevent many cable customers from receiving in-state broadcast signals by contractually prohibiting their affiliates from granting retransmission consent to cable systems in adjacent DMAs.

"The networks and their affiliates do so even when this practice results in cable customers having limited or no access to in-state broadcast signals.

"In some circumstances, especially in rural markets, this practice prevents cable customers from receiving in-state news, sports, weather, public affairs programming, and even political advertising for state elections," the ACA filing adds.

In Congress and at the FCC, broadcasters say they will resist any efforts to tamper with broadcaster retrans rights or the market exclusivity that undergird those rights.

Retrans is "a market-based negotiation that is working exactly as Congress intended," says NAB's Wharton.

"We're hopeful that policymakers will resist efforts of cable operators to import network signals from out-of-market, since doing so would damage the fundamental concept of broadcast localism," says Wharton.

LIN Television is among the broadcast groups that have had considerable success in negotiating retrans payments from cable and satellite operators and it doesn't want to give them up.

"When Congress looks at the record of what's actually transpired, I don't think that the cable industry is going to be able to make the case that there's been any kind of abuse," says Greg Schmidt, EVP for digital media at LIN.

"The evidence is going to come out that the deals are happening in a rational way with pricing that is, by and large, rational and sensible."