 We're going to get started with our last panel of the day before we break into small groups for additional training. It's now my. What happened to seeming the best for last? I was just going to say that. Yeah. We all know Jerry. Is that going to pass? It is now my pleasure to introduce two individuals that I work with almost daily. Jim Horwood, his partner of Spiegel McDermott, has been in private practice with the law firm since 1973. Yes, please give him a round of applause. Concentration is in representing municipal and cooperative electrical distribution systems, associations of systems, municipal joint action agencies, and generation and transmission cooperatives and energy matters, as well as advising cities and nonprofit organizations on communications issues. His work often concerns questions involving interpretation and application of federal communications law. The US Constitution, including the First Amendment, federal and state antitrust laws, and utility regulatory laws. In addition, Jim serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Community Media as a special appointee for legal affairs and provides advice to organizations that manage access centers and to others interested in promoting the use of public educational and governmental access. Next to Jim is Jerry Letter of Council, Best Best in Krieger. You can give him an applause, too. I shouldn't have to ask him that. I'll remember all of you. Jerry is a well-known advocate for the rights of public and private property owners with respect to issues of law and policy arising from federal, state communications, legislation, and regulation. He developed the first model license agreements for access to buildings and rooftops to assist both telecommunications service providers and property owners protect their interests. He has served as the executive director of advocacy and research advancement for the Building Owners and Managers Association International, executive director of government affairs, the United States Telephone Association, and general counsel of the US Conference of Mayors. A member of the Federal Communications Bar Association, Jerry received his law degree with honors from Temple University in Philadelphia and his undergraduate degree also with honors from Haverford College in Philadelphia. He serves as a public policy advisor to the Alliance for Community Media and its members. We're going to start out with giving a brief overview of the CAP Act and kind of putting it in a historical context. For those that may not be as familiar with the CAP Act, I've asked Mr. Harwood to talk a little bit about how the CAP Act came to be and why we're all here today. OK, to start out, historically, Cable's been around since the early 60s. It started in New York, Pennsylvania. New York City was early. Back in 1968, the FCC had initiated a rulemaking proceeding which resulted in rules in 1972, which caused the FCC to be regulating Cable. Subsequently, the US Supreme Court found that the FCC was exceeding its authority because they were treating Cable as a common carrier and that was prohibited under the Communications Act. But during that period of time that the FCC was regulating, they had required pay access channels on all cable systems with various amounts depending upon the size of the community. And they provided for a franchise fee of 3% to go to local governments plus an additional 2% if the additional 2% was used for cable-related purposes, which was pretty much considered to be peg access a little bit for administration. After the FCC was found not to have this authority, there were efforts for federal legislation that brought us to the 1984 Cable Act. There, kind of as either the Grand Bargain or the Devil's Bargain was reached with local governments in the industry, which said local franchising authorities can get a franchise fee of 5% without any restriction on how it should be used. Had we stuck with the 3%, 2%, we wouldn't be having the problems we would have today because there would be this 2% of gross revenues devoted for peg access purposes. Initially, most local governments, or I guess I wouldn't say most, but many would continue to vote 2% of the 5% franchise fee, which is actually 40% of the franchise fee, 2% of gross revenues, four peg purposes and as pressures on local governments kind of got eroded because of, I'm sorry, revenues got eroded because of other pressures. There is more of a temptation to use a franchise fee for other competing governmental purposes. The one other background was back in 2001, the FCC and the cable modem proceeding ruled that revenues received by a cable operator for delivery of cable modem service over the internet did not constitute cable or did not constitute revenues from cable service. So those revenues, which weren't that large back in 2001 but have since grown, couldn't be touched and as part of the franchise fee. That was, the FCC's determination was appealed to the Ninth Circuit together with other determinations. The Ninth Circuit is the most reversed circuit by the Supreme Court, but this was the one time the Supreme Court didn't reverse a decision and they wound up upholding this part of the FCC's regulation, so you have the fact that you aren't guaranteed the full 5% and the total pot of gross revenues wasn't growing as much as it might have. I think it's probably still greater than it used to be, but not nearly what it might be. In addition to the 5% cap of the franchise fee, what was excluded from the cap was money used for peg capital which concerns both buildings and equipment, so you could have additional payments over and above the 5%. Many franchises that were negotiated after 1984 continued to provide for some money for operating funds even though the literal language of the act said you couldn't use it there. If you had a good consultant or good lawyer, you could still negotiate some way of obtaining operating funds. And actually, you still can under some circumstances, but it has become more difficult, particularly if you don't have local franchising. This attempt to get money to be available to use for peg operating funds was a major impetus behind the cap act or the predecessor act. What was the predecessor to the one? Oh, the Bits and Sunabits? Yeah. Sunabits Bill, yeah. That's actually what we call it. While this was happening, we then had AT&T. There's the author right there, Hap. No, the good parts of it. I'm not thinking the co-pact. The co-pact. The co-pact. While this was happening, AT&T decided to go into the cable business. They didn't call it the cable business, and the video delivery business. And they were delivering video over an IP platform, which is their U-verse system. When they designed the U-verse system as best we can tell and rolled it out in Texas, they hadn't thought about peg access. So they designed it in a way that they would deliver something that was pretty much equivalent to commercial television. Then when they found out they had to provide peg access, they adopted a kind of fix that would deliver the peg channels but in a much less robust way than the broadcast channels. So we had that going. We, the Alliance and a number of other access organizations, state chapters, local governments, some of the Natoa chapters filed a petition for declaratory relief at the FCC, which is what Jerry asked Commissioner Cops about, which had been sitting at the commission for 32 months and saying, gee, what AT&T is offering is pretty much is video service that ought to be treated like cable. You ought to make sure that the peg access channels are delivered with the same functionality and accessibility as the broadcast channels. The only thing you might want to add there, Jim, is we actually got hit with two challenges. And I want to say this because Debs in the room and the Michigan folks had a fight a different challenge. So at that same time, we were seeing the AT&T Channel 99 solution. At the same time, we saw Comcast and some of the traditional folks moving the peg channels up to the stratosphere in a digital format only, though. So we had a number of petitions that were filed at the commission at the same time. There were actually three files. There was the Alliance one, another one filed by Lansing, and then one filed by a city of Dearborn and Meridian Township. Meridian Township was lead. And they also had litigation going. And that got settled favorably for those communities, although it doesn't necessarily apply to other communities. And we've seen this kind of channel slamming taking place elsewhere. So while the FCC could have fixed that problem, the FCC hasn't been dealing with it. So the CAP Act is attempting to deal with both issues. It's trying to deal with the revenue problem. And it's trying to deal with the functionality problem. Essentially, you try to come in and say that, gee, we really ought to have video delivered the same way and as robustly as it had in the past. We've seen a change in the part of the cable industry as becoming more resistant to providing peg access. And I guess now perceiving it as competing with some of their other services. So we've seen pushback from them. So the CAP Act is intended to fix these problems. If we could get the FCC to rule on our petition and rule favorably, we wouldn't need half of what's in the CAP Act. We'd still need the revenue issue because that can't be fixed by the FCC because that can only be fixed by Congress. So I think that kind of brings us up to where we are today. Thanks, Jim. Any questions of Jim? Question in the back. Hi, I'm Koresi Frame with the Median Democracy Coalition. Mr. Horwitz, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. So when we're talking about what the CAP Act wants, what language in that bill would help make peg channels more available? I understand about the AT&T U-verse petition, but I'm curious as to what we're actually asking for beyond the U-verse petition. Can I just ask that we defer that because that's my job. Jerry's going to give us a run through of what's in the CAP Act. What if I don't? Please make sure that you give me holy heck. Jerry, I'm going to turn it over to you. Sure. I don't know how this is working, so I'm supposed to go here and there's a clicker. Cool. Great. A clicker. You can see I'm in charge of all the highly technical terms in this. OK, am I pointing this somewhere? So that's the three of us. You've heard us. First of all, and I'm so happy that we have this because it was part of the discussion I heard from the professionals earlier this morning about what it is we want to make sure everybody knows that we have. The bottom line is with the alliance, we want you to make sure whether you're here in the room or you're watching this on the stream, that you're not alone. You're not alone and we're here to help. So if you need a copy of the legislation, if you need a letter, a model letter to ask folks to be a cosponsor, it's on our web page. Again, there's a summary of the CAPAC. We're going to go through it. It's there. There's a sample letter that you can go and ask the FCC to act on our petition. That's there. And then finally, what Sylvia has brought to us is the voter voice. And what's so important about that is it's not just there for the alliance member, but it's there for the alliance producer. It's there for all the alliance clients who hopefully we will be educating that they're as at risk as we are. And a responsibility for fixing this or remedying this is as much theirs as it is ours. I mean, if they truly want to continue to be able to deliver their message. And then one of the things that we've been sort of, people have given us a bit of a hard time with over the years is that they say that our agenda is all over the place. No, it's not on one page. And there it is right there. That's our agenda right now. Our agenda is to make sure that we can pass the CAP Act. And right now we think that that means driving for co-sponsors on the House, finding a Senate champion. And we want to pressure the FCC to act on the alliance's petition. Again, as Mr. Horowitz mentioned, if we could get that petition resolved, an awful lot of alliance members around the country would be benefited immediately. Now, that's not to say that that's all we're looking for. And we'll go through the CAP Act in one second to talk about the things that only Congress can do. And we'll highlight those. And then again, Mr. Horowitz talked about the peg petition. It's been there for 32 months. And we've been waiting for it. But the other thing that we've learned, and again, this is a real compliment, I think, to Sylvia's leadership, is that I heard the professionals today say, do your colleagues, do your users understand the challenge that you're facing and have you enlisted their support? The fact that we're here today at the New American Foundation and we've got Madco and we've got all the other folks that were kind enough to come here today and to put the CAP Act on their legislative agenda reflects that Sylvia is living the message that we keep being told. And that is enlist your allies, marshal your assets. Who's out there that's impacted negatively if this thing doesn't get fixed? And do they understand that they're impacted negatively? So Sylvia's gotten it done at the macro level. It's up to us now to get it done at the micro level to get this thing done. So let's go through the CAP Act. It's HR 1746. And as you see, this year it is bipartisan. So it's Mrs. Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin and Congressman Steve La Tourette, Republican from Ohio. So the way I'm going to try to explain it is talk about what the problem is that we see in the community and then the solution that's posed or is present in the CAP Act. So the biggest problem for every single peg center in the country is that there is a limitation in the act as to what you can use the peg dollars for. That is any dollars over and above the 5% franchise fee. Thank you. Limitations in present law. In present law. Thank you. Limitations in present law. So in layman's understanding, any use of the 5% franchise fee is legal. You can do whatever you want with the 5% franchise fee. It can all go to the general fund. It can all go to peg. It can all go or it can be split even. Whatever you want to do with the 5%, there are no limitations on that. You can demand in a franchise if you can document needs and interest. You can demand funds over and above the 5%. But that money has to be used today exclusively for capital expenditures. And what happens if it's not used for a capital expenditure is that the cable company can engage in self-help. They can come in and they can say, uh-uh. You used a percent, right? You used half of that 2% we're giving you. You used half of it for operations. Therefore, we only owe you a 4% franchise fee because that other percent that you're using for operations, we can take as a credit against our franchise. And that was one of the difficulties with a FCC 621 order, 621 being the franchising section of the act. And that's been one of our problems so that, and we've seen operators threaten this around the country. I'm not sure that we've actually seen one follow-through with it yet, but we have seen the threat. And it's something that Mr. Horwood and I and his colleague Tim Lay and my colleague Joe Van Eaten, it's something we have to tell franchising authorities around the country. It's a very real risk. If you use the capital, if you use peg funds, that is those amounts of dollars over the 5% of franchises, if you use those for operations, you could in fact have the company demand a credit. What the ACT does, what the CAP Act does, it demands, and I see what Mr. Horwood was saying. When I was saying ACT earlier, I was referring to the Telecommunications Act or what we know is, but I think he's right. Let me refer to present law and I won't refer to the CAP Act as the ACT. So what the ACT does is it amends current law to ensure that peg fees can be used for any peg purpose, i.e. capital and or operating. And if you look in the CAP Act, you're gonna read it and you're gonna say, where does it say that? And in fact, what it does is it eliminates the definitional limitation to capital that's in the ACT and you'll see it right in there. You'll see there's a definition fixed in. That's where this gets done, which is kind of interesting a little bit of a lesson about sometimes how the law works. Please. Historically, which I did forget to mention, is when the 1984 ACT was passed, it allowed payments for peg operations for grandfathered franchises, for franchises that existed as of the day of that ACT in 1984. And through the expiration, those franchises have now expired. So what we did in drafting the CAP Act is we kind of combined the provision that tied to pre-existing franchises with those for the new franchises and eliminated the date and we treated it the same as it used to be for the pre-1984 franchises. And again, sometimes we rush through these things, but we've got time, it's worth talking about this. Why is it that we see this as a problem today and we didn't see it as a problem in the past? Well, in the past, the cable operators wanted your peg stations to work. It was important to them. And why was it important? Because they only had one competitor in the marketplace and that was the satellite dish. And what did the satellite dish not have? It didn't have you, right? It didn't have Johnny's football game. It didn't have your daughter's ballet recital. It didn't have the city council. It was the thing that distinguished them from the satellite dish. It was the thing that said, you wanna purchase our service because it makes you more a member of the community. Today they look there and they say, well, we've got these other competitors out here, whether it be the local telephone guy or it be online or over the top programming, whatever you wanna call it. And they say, hey, they don't have this expenditure. So we're at a market disadvantage. They don't see it the way that they used to see it. They don't see peg programming as being an instrumental to their success. The other thing is when you only had 12 channels of programming and you had three peg channels, you then had a 15 channel system you can market. And that 3%, those three additional channels are pretty darn cheap. You know, they didn't create C-SPAN out of the goodness of their heart. They created C-SPAN because it was a penny a subscriber to do it for a year. That's pretty good programming, right? Little did they ever know. Now, my friend Susan Swain would punch me in the nose if she ever heard me say that. But it's the truth. I mean, peg and things like C-SPAN were really inexpensive programming outlets when they didn't have the money or they didn't view it. And today, they really view, again, today, the channel capacity that your peg programming occupies could either be occupied by another home shopping network where they can make money or it can be rolled into the broadband that's being used for their high-speed internet. So there are so many more competing demands on that space, they really do have a market incentive to move you off and we need to recognize that. So what's the other thing, the other major problem that we've seen and Mr. Horwood went through this is the discriminatory treatment of peg channels. So again, just for simplistic state, there are two different types of problems that we're seeing in discriminating against peg channels. There's the channel 99 AT&T and from what we understand, the century link will be following the same model. And then there's the slamming issue. That is, there's the moving the peg programming to a digital tier first to see how it works out. We're gonna move peg over and if that works out okay, then we'll take the rest of the basic tier there. But they tried to move the peg and there's where Deb and the folks in Michigan were integral in coming in and fighting Comcast because Comcast was really the first one to do it. Well, the first one we could fight because Brighthouse was doing it down in Florida. Unfortunately, the Florida franchise law down there said they could do it. So Meridian Township and Dearborn and a few other communities up in Michigan took on the fight. And while we got a temporary restraining order up there, which was terrific, we really, what all said and done is that was resolved through an agreement of the parties. And I think that agreement, now I don't want to undercut what ACM and Mr. Horwood was able to negotiate with Comcast as part of the Comcast universal merger, but I really think that the terms and the ideas that were committed to in the resolution of that Michigan legislation really were the basis an awful lot for the merger terms with respect to peg that they said that they wouldn't move the peg channels until they moved the whole basic tier. And again, that's all we ever wanted and you're gonna hear more about that later. You know, I mean, people will try to paint us into the corner and say we're being Luddites that we don't want to go digital. That's just not the case. We do want to go digital, but we want to go with everyone else. We don't want to be the only ones going so that you have to purchase a box to see peg programming, a box that you don't have to purchase or rent to see the rest of the basic tier. The other thing is the loss of peg support and localism. An awful lot of the state franchise laws said we can reduce the expense, we can reduce consumers costs for cable programming if we get rid of this peg support. They really don't need it anymore. You know, so we can eliminate it. And in an awful lot of states, peg support either went to zero immediately or typically what happened is is peg support was to be honored until what would have otherwise been the natural expiration of the franchise and then it would go to zero. Now some states do better than that, right? I mean, Michigan, California, none of them actually do provide a peg support. So Michigan and Michigan, it's two and California people argue that you can get up to three. You know, again, I'm not trying to say which it is. I'm just saying that there are states that have preserved it. If the state has not preserved it, right? If the state has not preserved it, what the CAPAC says is that the cable operator must provide the greater of 2% of gross revenues or the historic support received, i.e. that amount that was received prior to a state franchise, or three, the state financial obligation. Again, our goal here in crafting this language, and when I say ours, I mean, whole bunch of folks in Washington, whether it be ACM, Natoa, ACT, an awful lot of organizations put together on this, our first goal with respect to the financial terms was to do no harm, was to do no harm. So we tried to craft it as broadly as possible to say, look, we can guarantee you a 2% floor, but if you did better than that, we don't want to harm that. So you can go ahead and you can get it, and that's what the ACT would do. And then is the loss of actual channels. We've got state legislation that eliminates channels themselves. And so what the solution is, and it's important for us to remember this because this is one of the primary criticisms that NCTA leveled against us. The solution is really very simple. It said that if the law took away your right to demand peg channels, we're gonna turn the clock back to the day before the state legislation was passed, and how many did they owe you then? And if they didn't owe you any then, then you can ask up to three. Now you might say, well, why might they not have owed you any then? Well, your community may not have been in existence then, or you may not have had that, you might have separated out your franchise. So that additional point is very important. But again, we're not, it's all we're simply doing, and I think that this is the bottom line for the CAP Act. What the CAP Act simply does is it turns the clock back to the day that local governments or local communities sat down with the cable operator and negotiated a franchise and said, this is what you were willing to give us when you were at the table and negotiated with us. Oh, and by the way, you've done very well with these terms. All we're doing is making you honor the commitments that you made, because we're still giving you the same thing, right? The community is still providing access to the rights of way for them to provide their service. So we're still providing the real estate. The question is, how did the rental terms get so turned around? The CAP Act would revert back to the rental terms that everyone agreed to voluntarily. So finally, AT&T, and Mr. Horwood referenced this when he said video provider. AT&T, and we think others as days go on, will claim that the Cable Act doesn't apply to them because they're not a cable provider, they're a video provider. And as such, they don't fit any of these categories. Well, we actually took a page out of AT&T's playbook again, Beth McConnell mentioning this this morning, sometimes they've got real pros on their side, so let's steal their words. In almost every one of the state bills that was passed, AT&T created this category called video provider. And a video provider was basically somebody that was employing IPTV technology but was still using the rights of way to deliver their video programming. And what the CAP Act says is that we don't care what technology that you use, if you use the rights of way, i.e. you're on a wire over the rights of way to deliver your programming, then you're a cable operator for purposes of the obligations created in the CAP Act, and so that's what it does. Now, I wanna thank Mitzi Horada, Mitzi when we were looking at him getting ready for this thing, said what happened, NCTA had that paper out last year, did we ever put a rebuttal together for it? And we sort of did, but it got lost. So yesterday, Sylvia, Jim, Mitzi and I got together and we went through the NCTA paper and we outlined why it's just misleading at best, specious probably being more accurate. I'd use the word specious, Mitzi, but I can't spell it. So I'm misleading, I know how to spell. I've got to get that blackberry, I guess. So the first claim is that Peg is fine, we don't need legislation, things are going along just fine. And we would say if you say Peg in August 31st, 2007 was fine, we'd say, yeah, on September 1st, however, the Texas law, the first in the nation went into effect and things got dramatically worse. And so all you have to do is look at the Alliance for Community Media's research, the Benton research that'll document the loss of channels, the loss of centers and the loss of staff across the country. I mean, this is laughable, this claim that Peg is fine. It's not, it's not, and we can document the losses that are happening every single day. The other thing is that the CAP Act imposes an unfair burden on cable operators as opposed to dish and IPTV providers. Again, this is the standard playbook, right? One, you don't need the legislation. Two, well, if you put the legislation there, it's unfair to us compared to our competitors. I remember I used to explain lobbying in the telecommunications world to folks that were really intimidated by it, and I'd say, well, how many people here in this room are parents? Oh, let me ask, how many people in the room are parents? Okay, and if you only have one child, put your hand down. If you have more than one kid, keep your hand, all right? If you have more than one child, then you know absolutely everything that you ever will need to know about the dynamics of telecommunications legislation. Okay, and here's the deal. You like him better than me, okay? Every single message the industry ever claims can be reduced to that single human emotion. You like them better than us, right? And here it is here, right? If you do this, you're liking them better than you like us, and it's just wrong. One, dish networks have a set aside for public interest programming. And if you took that percentage, which I believe is 4%, if you took that percentage and measured it against the number of channels, a typical cable operator has, the number of channels, even in a Montgomery County where you've got 11 channels, doesn't rise to the level of capacity that a dish provider has to set aside. So it's specious. No, it's just not there. And the other thing is that the act clarifies that IPTV providers are cable for purposes of the act. So it does apply to them. So what they're talking about when they say it doesn't apply to dish and it doesn't apply to IPTV is just wrong. It's simply wrong. Now, and if they'd like to strengthen the language to make sure that it does apply to IPTV, we'd welcome their guidance, okay? It says that the CAP Act will result in higher cable rates. Well, to me it's pretty simple across the country when Peg disappeared from the bottom line. The answer is no. The other thing is that cable typically now, increasingly, is an unregulated entity. So the idea that somehow a regulatory, regulatorally imposed fee will increase rates is again, it's misleading. It's just misleading, you know, it is. It's simply misleading. The last thing is that a 2%, even if it was, that a 2% contribution to this programming is so much less expensive than they're paying for other programming. Finally, there's no rule that says that you have to pass it through. There's not an obligation that says you have to pass this thing through. So if you choose to pass it through rather than, you know, giving the CEO the 12th million dollar bonus that year, then that's on you. But we're not putting you at a competitive disadvantage. We're not saying you have to do it. Oh, and by the way, we are applying this to all of your competitors. So again, it's not a competitive disadvantage. You know, they say that it overrides state law. Yep, yes it does. We're guilty. It overrides state law. But what does it do? It re, all it does is it reinstates the level of support for Peg that was in place that the cable operator negotiated. Again, we're not imposing anything on them that they didn't agree to at the bargaining table. And they've done pretty well under those terms. It keeps us from going digital and mandates channel positioning wrong. Understand that, that's wrong. The CAP Act does not ban them from going digital. It does not mandate channel positioning. All it says is that the cable operator cannot charge a customer for additional equipment to see the Peg programming. They want to go, if they want to go digital with their Peg and they give the equipment away then under the CAP Act we have to live with it. And we're willing to. Our point is do not, do not tell us that I've got to pay an extra $10 a month to see Peg programming if I don't have to get that to see the over the air or the must carry type programming. That's what the CAP Act does. And so the idea that we don't want them to go digital, wrong. The idea that we're mandating channel placement, wrong. It's just not the case. So I'll take, Jim and I or Sylvia will take questions. I hope that we've answered the question, what's in the CAP Act, more importantly, I hope we've answered the question, what's not in the CAP Act. And then finally, please note, I wish I knew how to skip back to a slide real quick. You're not alone. I mean, the alliance is here. The alliance is here to help you in any way, shape, or form that you need to be helped. But you're not alone as well in the people that are being impacted. You've got to find the others in your community that are being impacted and work with them to carry our message. Richard. Question on. Equal treatment of the channels. Previously, it was easier in the analog spectrum to do both quality testing and be assured that your signal is being delivered a specific quality now on digital to a little bit more challenging or to have new tools to be able to do that. So one is, you know, the concern has been when going to digital, I've raised this concept before, of the concept of bit starving, that the operators can essentially starve out the amount of bandwidth for channels so that our channels look degraded as a result in what are the measures of standards of equal treatment when it comes to signal standards. And second is the technologies that are included in the new platforms, such as widgets and other streams of data that are respective of, for example, closed caption, description channels, et cetera, and ensuring that our channels have the capacity to deliver that to important audiences that have been the base of our serving the public interest. Again, we couldn't agree with you more. The mission of the Alliance is to have, to ensure that we don't wind up in a digital ghetto, right? We wanna be our programming once that the same robust presentation as the over-the-air broadcasters are receiving as part of the MUST channel. And we continue to be guided by that. We continue to strive for that. Can I tell you that all that is in the cat-back right now? No, no, but we've got a good start and we continue to work on it. Again, we think that an awful lot of that can be resolved with the FCC's petition or at least get us a significant way down the road. I will tell you that the city of Portland has just, I guess it's not finalized yet, but we're gonna have a nice model out there for the types of things to be talking about in franchising because one of the missions for the Alliance is not just advocacy at the federal level, but also is to equip our members with what they ought to be asking for at the local level. I mean, you heard a terrific presentation this morning about how DC Channel is involved intimately in the needs assessment that's happening in DC as they go into their franchise renewal. We're hoping that ACM members across the country are sitting at the table with their local governments when they're doing their franchise renewals to say, we know Portland got this, why aren't we asking for something similar? So we agree with it, I can't promise you that it's all there, but we're moving in that direction. So Jerry, this whole cat-back issue has been around for a while. What's the hang-up? It's a very fair question. This is our second Congress that the cat-back has been introduced. So it's the third year. What's the hold-up? The hold-up is that we haven't carried the ball well enough. We haven't shown enough members of Congress the risks of losing Peg that we all see. I mean, I know that there's probably a different answer that people are expecting, that, you know, what's a GOP-controlled Congress and they don't say, no, no, no. It's on us, it's on us. The fact that the Peg, the fact that the cat-back hasn't moved, I believe, is an indictment of our efforts. And until we get our acts organized, that's the only thing that we can blame. We're just, we're not doing a good enough job educating the members of Congress at the threats that exist to Peg and the fix that the cat-back presents to those threats. I can be overridden on that answer, by the way. Not that I don't love you, Jerry. There's an additional component and it's the elephant in the room. And we've all got acknowledges and I don't disagree with Jerry about carrying the ball. I don't. But the elephant in the room is who is sitting on the other side of the cat-back? One massive corporate entity that has tremendous influence that is not going to be in favor of the cat-back. We all have to recognize this. I'm incredibly sensitive to it because I have lived this since 2005. And we just have to be honest, I think, about carrying the ball and about who's on the other side of that line of scrimmage. Yeah, you know, if I could happen. And the reason Eric got so slow in answering is because for the first time ever, I mean, I think Sylvia's probably sitting down there laughing and it'll teach you, Jerry, not to put your famous light in. I mean, I usually have a slide when I do a presentation that says the fundamental understanding of any political decision, whether it be at City Hall, the State Capitol, or up in the Congress, the fundamental sort of formula for every one of those decisions is a risk-reward ratio. Every decision-maker has to understand that the failure to act provides a greater risk to them and to their community of interest than action. And so when all is said and done, that's a terribly difficult message to hear because when all is said and done, it's not that necessarily AT&T or some other corporate monolith is on the other side of the table. It's that we're not being a big enough monolith on this side of the table. It really falls on us. It falls on us. So that's Eric getting back to your question and HAP is absolutely correct. But I would say HAP's point, if I could put it into context in my world, and that is, okay, I'm looking at that risk-reward ratio, I know I got to work pretty hard because they've done a good job. They've done a good job of demonstrating the risk for supporting us. The question is, have we done a good enough job to demonstrate the risk for supporting them? And I don't... Let me toss in a couple of thoughts. HAP's wrong saying it's the monolith on the other side because it's two industries on the other side. It's AT&T and it's cable. But that just makes a job a little bit harder. But if we are to prevail, it makes it much more satisfying. And I feel like we're at... Let me push in three. You're forgetting Verizon. Hey, hey, hey, you're right. A good example is what happened with LPFM, which you heard about this morning. They were up against the National Association of Broadcasters and public television. And, you know, those are two groups that are probably as powerful as those opposing us. And they were able to prevail. And they were able to prevail through lots of the kinds of things we're talking about, which is grass roots organizing and talking to members of Congress and finding champions. So if the LPFM people could do it, so can we. Yeah, absolutely. Anybody else? And it took them a long time. Hi, Mitz. Okay, so I guess I'm going to focus on the same... Well, a couple of things. First is that Zaneda and I had a conversation at lunch. I don't know what she is. And so there's a couple ideas that we'd like to organize, particularly around aggregating the list of religious organizations who are users of the station so that we can try to compile that. And we talked about, I think there already are some videos but pushing the idea of people running PSAs on their channel now, so we will work on that. But the question I have for you, Jerry, is Chris Van Hollen is a member from our district who sits in the number four position in the House leadership. We've already had a meeting with their office. They weren't able to meet on Wednesday and we had a conference call with them. And the question that they raised for us is, well, what is the strategy? What is Baldwin's strategy for passing this bill? And frankly, what they said straight out to us was, you don't necessarily need to have every member, you don't need to have that many cosponsors, what you need is a vehicle that you can attach it to. But we don't even have, right now, I don't think we have a, we just got Markey, who's gonna need somebody else. We don't have the right people in that committee pushing that. So what's our strategy? I mean, we're sort of all of us working to raise the background noise. We're looking to add sponsors. But what is the strategy for moving it in a way that you actually need to move bills in this Congress? The easy answer is to get those people, right? We know who those people are, that is subcommittee members that have to be our cosponsors and they're on our target list. So again, I think the point that, you're making lots of good points. The point I want to convey to all of us to make sure everybody understands it is that cosponsorship is not the be-all and the end-all, right? And the lack of cosponsors does not, in any way, shape or form limit our ability to move forward. So I think that's lesson number one. Lesson number two is that, you know, all members of Congress are created equal. Just some of them get the vote a little bit earlier in the process, right? So it's that subcommittee that we really need to target and do the best that we can. The third message that I take from your question is that there are shortcuts. There are shortcuts in the legislative process, right? I mean, we can all go back to Schoolhouse Rock and remember the song about I am a bill, I'm only a bill. I'll sing it for you if you like, no. I'll quit today, though. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. For those of you in the online that couldn't hear that, the question was it's a shame that your voice isn't as good-looking as you are. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You don't have to go through every step, right? I mean, there are opportunities to look to amend other legislation that's moving. You know, so we will look to all of those. This is a confusing year. I mean, I'll be honest, and Sylvia and I have had this conversation. And we have looked at that amendment strategy. Our problem is we just don't know a bill today that gets there. The only piece of must pass legislation out there, whether there's a continuing resolution and they're not really very agreed on that. And then the other thing is whether or not the super committee comes out with something. And we are investigating opportunities to see if there's anything we can do there. The real problem is on that super committee, congressman Upton sits. And if it's something that's in the jurisdiction of his committee, it's gonna be a little hard if he hasn't had the opportunity to see it. Yeah, well, I'm trying to be polite. So- It's all on you, Hap. Yeah. That's it, Hap, we've got Van Hollen. You know, all we need is the Republican. Where are you, pal? So, again, so our mission near term, find a Senate champion, build co-sponsors. That's the mission of the alliance membership and our allies. The mission for Sylvia and Jim and I is to continue to look for opportunities to fast track the legislation in any way that we can. And the real truth of the matter is our responsibility is to work with Representative Baldwin and Representative La Tourette. Cause sometimes in Washington, we get this silliness that we talk about in the first person singular, we're working through the member of Congress, it's their call and just keeping them informed. Anybody else? Yeah, Jerry, Bill Co-Attendant, just one question. Appreciate that no piece of legislation will have all the words in it you want. Assuming a Cap Act does pass, attached to something else or a standalone, is there currently a legislative history for it to help the FCC implement or is that going to be a lot of other effective competitions and things that we'll have to fight the next time? It's a terrific question. Yeah, for folks that may not understand everything we're saying, typically legislation is pretty bare bones, right? And then behind the legislation, there's something called a committee report or a conference report or whatever the report might happen to be that sometimes explains, it's called the legislative history, it explains some things. And so those are typically written as the process goes along. So there's nothing I can point you to right now. It's typically done by the committee staff with outside assistance. So yes, there are a number of issues. For instance, if you talk to the folks in Kentucky and the folks in Florida, the Alliance membership from those two states, they would say, we need to make sure that there's something in there that ensures that we're part of the Cap Act because we don't necessarily have a franchise fee, we have a tax. Now they've converted our franchise fee into a tax and we need to somehow make sure that we're aware of that and we're committed to working to addressing that. That's why it's the other thing is that we do not, let me put it in the positive, we welcome input from Alliance members and our allies around the country. As you look at the Cap Act, if it doesn't work perfectly for you, please let us know so that where we can address that in committee language or legislative history, we will. Any other questions? All right, please join me in thanking Jerry and Jim.