NAB boss: Stalemated Congress good for broadcast interests

A politically divided Congress is a good thing because it "gives you a lot more procedural hurdles to utilize, if you need to, and to stop bad things," NAB President Gordon Smith said during an appearance on C-Span.

To Smith's way of thinking, the more stalemated Congress is, the less chance that the government will be able to move forward efficiently on initiatives such as a national broadband plan that emphasizes wireless and de-emphasizes broadcast.

"We're in the video business. They want to be in the video business. Video is what creates the (broadband) congestion. No one does it more efficiently than we do," he argued. If, as the FCC is trying to do, "you take all the broadcast spectrum, there probably isn't enough spectrum in the universe to manage one-to-one video on every mobile device," he said.

For more:
- The Hill has this story

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