Testimony of Edward Munson at Hearing on STELA Reauthorization WASHINGTON, DC -- KPHO-TV Vice President and General Manager Edward Munson testified today before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology at a hearing on Innovation Versus Regulation in the Video Marketplace.
Below is a transcript of his testimony as prepared for delivery.
* * *
Good afternoon, my name is Edward Munson and I am the Vice President and General Manager of KPHO-TV in Phoenix, Arizona. KPHO is owned by the Meredith Corporation. We have 13 stations across the country, in places like Portland, Oregon, Nashville, Tennessee, and Flint/Saginaw, Michigan. I am here today representing the National Association of Broadcasters.
The topic of this hearing Innovation Versus Regulation in the Video Marketplace, touches on two concepts that are part and parcel to being a local TV broadcaster. TV stations exist in a highly regulated environment, more so than any other witness on this panel.
In fact, broadcasters must comply with regulations not applicable to any other distribution platform. For instance, TV stations must abide by decency rules and childrens programming requirements. We must give federal candidates reasonable access to air campaign advertisements, and we must offer those spots at the lowest rate charged to any of our commercial advertisers. We must maintain main studios within certain geographic limits and with specific staffing obligations; submit numerous quarterly, annual and biennial reports to the FCC; and compile quarterly lists of station programming.
We proudly embrace many of these responsibilities, but some regulations place broadcasting at a competitive disadvantage to the other video providers on this panel. For example, decades-old ownership restrictions reflect a time when broadcasting was the only game in town. It makes no sense to hamstring broadcasters with outdated limitations when our direct competitors are not restricted in any way. Another example is the online public file regulation which requires local TV stations to place sensitive pricing information online when our direct competitors do not have the same obligations.
For these types of regulations, fundamental fairness requires regulatory parity for the benefit of competition and consumers.
Based on our fundamental obligation to serve the public interest, some in the pay-TV industry are arguing that a programming dispute means broadcasters are somehow not serving their local communities. In the rare event that a broadcaster has a dispute with one pay-TV company in a market, consumers have multiple other options to get their video programming. We understand that many of you are concerned about the impact these disputes have on your constituents and we share that concern. That is why it is important to remind this Committee that no broadcaster has ever stopped broadcasting because of a dispute with a pay-TV provider. We are never off the air or blacked out. Our signals are always being broadcast and they are always free.
Over my career, I have personally been involved in many successful carriage negotiations with companies like CenturyLink, Suddenlink, and Mediacom. My experience, like the experience of nearly the entire broadcast television industry, is that deals get done all the time. But of course, you dont hear about the ones that go smoothly, you hear about the handful that dont. There is no doubt the Time Warner Cable/CBS dispute was very unfortunate, but it was predictable. The dispute seemed almost orchestrated out of a DC lobbying playbook - create a crisis, then ask Congress to fix the crisis in your favor.
The pay-TV industry will tell you that carriage impasses have dramatically increased, that the retrans system is broken and needs to be fixed. But honestly, thats a bit disingenuous.
In the few instances where agreements have not been reached in the last two years, there is a distinct and disturbing pattern: 89% of the disputes have involved only three pay-TV companies: Time Warner Cable, DISH and DirecTV. Thats nearly 9 out of every 10 disputes. What that suggests to me is there is not a problem with the process, but that theres a problem with the players. And we should not be rewarding this bad behavior.
It is not a coincidence that these are the very same companies pressing Congress most aggressively for government intervention. These pay-TV companies have ratcheted up their efforts for government involvement in retransmission consent negotiations because, despite having very healthy margins and soaring stock prices, they are looking to Congress to help control their programming costs. But pricing decisions are best left to the marketplace.
Similarly, the government should have no role in deciding when, how or where an owner of video content distributes that content. These carriage agreements are increasingly about the digital rights for our popular programming. We want to make sure that consumers using new and innovative platforms can access our content which, in turn, fosters more competition in the video marketplace.
In conclusion, television broadcasters provide the most watched media out there - and by a wide margin. But we are not running to Congress asking for preferential treatment in our negotiations, or for any legislative changes to benefit our side. We want to negotiate freely in the market for the value of our content - we only ask that Congress not tip the scales in favor of any one industry.
Thank you and Im happy to answer any questions.
* * *
About NAB
The National Association of Broadcasters is the premier advocacy association for Americas broadcasters. NAB advances radio and television interests in legislative, regulatory and public affairs. Through advocacy, education and innovation, NAB enables broadcasters to best serve their communit
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Testimony of Edward Munson at Hearing on STELA Reauthorization WASHINGTON, DC -- KPHO-TV Vice President and General Manager Edward Munson testified today before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology at a hearing on Innovation Versus Regulation in the Video Marketplace.
