The National Association of Broadcasters filed a new study last week with the Federal Communications Commission showing that retransmission consent – the market-based negotiation process in which a pay-TV provider and a local television station reach a carriage agreement – is working just as Congress intended.

According to the study, "The data simply do not support the claim that increases in MVPD rates are caused by rising programming costs in general, or rising retransmission fees in particular. To the contrary, programming costs are rising slower than MVPD revenues, slower than other components of MVPD costs, and slower than MVPD profits, while retransmissions fees make up a small fraction of programming costs, and an even smaller percentage of MVPD revenues."

NAB's filing notes that a November 2009 study commissioned by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, DIRECTV and DISH Network claims that consumers pay between $0.37 and $0.74 per month to watch broadcast programming on their pay-TV service. If accurate, these figures translate to between .75 percent and 1.5 percent of the average monthly cost for expanded basic cable. This "hardly seems excessive," reports the study.

The report also debunks cable's claim that service interruptions related to retransmission consent are routine. "Aggregate service interruptions (related to retransmission consent) continue to represent approximately one one-hundredth of one percent of annual U.S. viewing hours." In fact,” the study counters, "the average household is far more likely to be without electricity, or to experience a cable system outage, than it is to be unable to watch its favorite broadcast channel via an MVPD as a result of a retransmission dispute."

The entire study is available in PDF format here.