Kyle McSlarrow of the NCTA acknowledges that cable operators are legally bound to carry broadcast television stations in their service area. And that's where is should end, he told members of the Senate Commerce Committee. "But dual must carry - - and multicast must carry, another one of the broadcasters' proposals - - will do nothing to forward the digital transition and harms consumers, cable operators and cable programmers alike. The broadcasters' attempt to appropriate additional channel capacity on cable systems through dual and multicast must carry will harm consumers by slowing the deployment of broadband and a host of other digital services."

Discussing the "finite amount of space" on a system, he added, "The more broadcasters get, the less capacity there is for innovative new applications sought by our customers."

NAB's Eddie Fritts has an entirely different view of the situation. On dual must carry, Fritts said, "For instance, after the transition, in 2009, if you are a cable subscriber with both analog and digital sets in your house, you will want your analog sets to work in analog - - and your digital sets to work in digital. Consumers should be empowered to make the choice about which signal to receive, not the cable gatekeeper."

Fritts proceeded on to multicasting, noting how it is already being put to use - - bringing new networks like Pax, UPN and WB to small markets with insufficient signals to carry them otherwise, broadcasts of local news, sports and weather, and foreign language and other types of niche programming.

He argued, "Let's be clear: the multi-cast issue is not about capacity. Regardless of whether they multi-cast, or do a single stream of HDTV programming - - a broadcaster's digital signal takes up no more bandwidth on the cable system. In fact, with new compression technologies, whether a station multi-casts or not, they will occupy one-half of the cable bandwidth they took up in the analog world. The cable system will get back the rest."