October 1999
"Priming The Pump": The Role of Retransmission Consent in the Transition To Digital Television
By Stuart N. Brotman

About the Author

Stuart N. Brotman is President of Stuart N. Brotman Communications, a global consulting firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts. He has extensive experience in the transactional, regulatory and policy issues of broadcasters; cable television operators and programmers; wireline and wireless carriers; communications satellite systems; feature film producers; distributors and exhibitors; computer hardware and software companies and professional sports teams.

From 1978?81, Mr. Brotman served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information -- the President's principal communications policy adviser -- at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in Washington, DC. In this capacity, he served as a liaison to the White House, the FCC, other government agencies, private industry, academic and research organizations, the legal community and the press. His work spanned a broad range of concerns, including broadcast, cable television and common carrier regulation and industry structure; home video and information services; public broadcasting; direct broadcast satellites; copyright; antitrust law; new communications technologies and programming sources; and federal and state communications legislation.

Mr. Brotman has completed the professional programs in negotiation and mediation at Harvard Law School. At Harvard Law School, he became the first person ever appointed to the Harvard Law School faculty to teach telecommunications and its first Research Fellow in Entertainment and Media Law. At the Columbia University School of Journalism, he serves as an annual faculty lecturer for the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism. He also serves as Moderator for the Aspen Italia Seminar for Leaders, focusing on the new frontiers of information in the Digital Age.

Mr. Brotman is an Information Technology Fellow in the International Communications Studies Program at The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He previously taught at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he also served as a Senior Fellow at The Fletcher School's Edward R. Murrow Center for International Communications and as an adviser to Fletcher's Program on International Information and Communication.

As a Senior Fellow of The Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies from 1988-1994, Mr. Brotman directed major research projects on negotiation and communications policymaking, the Executive Branch and the communications policy process, the Americans with Disabilities Act's telecommunications provisions and the implementation of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act. He also served as Director of The Annenberg Washington Program's Winter Faculty Workshops on domestic and international communications.

Mr. Brotman has written over 300 articles and reviews that have appeared in scholarly and professional publications. He also is the editor of The Telecommunications Deregulation Sourcebook, a popular reference volume covering the broadcasting, cable television and telephone industries; Telephone Company and Cable Television Competition, a pioneering anthology dealing with technical, economic and regulatory aspects of broadband networks; and the author of Broadcasters Can Negotiate Anything, a best-selling management education book for radio and television executives. He also is the author of Communications Law and Practice, the leading comprehensive treatise covering domestic and international common carrier and mass media regulation.