Lawyers for the American Cable Association told an aide to...

Lawyers for the American Cable Association told an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski the commission should, in the context of its media ownership rule review, “address the increasingly prevalent practice of separately owned, same market television stations coordinating” retransmission consent negotiations with pay-TV distributors, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bn9xfd). The association’s previous comments in the proceeding demonstrate the harm to competition in local TV markets that results from such practices, the notice said. An advocate for the free community newspaper industry met with an aide to Genachowski to argue against loosening media ownership restrictions, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bn9xea). Jim Haigh, a government relations consultant for the Association of Free Community Newspapers and Mid-Atlantic Community Newspapers Association, told Elizabeth Andrion, Genachowski’s acting chief legal adviser, that the worst possible outcome of the FCC’s media ownership proceeding would be “the widespread formation of outsized cross-media entities leveraging traditional advantages while also given the ability to leverage game-ending digital advantage.” That’s if the ownership rules proceed as reported and the agency’s open Internet rules are overturned by the courts, the notice said.