Charlie's angel: Gene Kimmelman grew up on the other side of everything from EchoStar's Charlie Ergen. Yet he has become the satcaster's No. 1 ally on Capitol Hill

Cable World, April 1, 2002 by Alicia Mundy

Item: According to Schwartzman, "We were talking with high-level people at [EchoStar and DirecTV] and told them what would be necessary [to soften up the regulators]. For one thing, stop hassling Northpoint. Stop looking like you're against competition." Northpoint's application for DBS spectrum is deadlocked at the FCC, thanks in part to EchoStar's continuing technical objections about interference.

Item: There is increasing skepticism over Ergen's willingness to carry all local broadcast TV stations in all local markets. The Consumers Union actually opposed the merger in its filing with the FCC and DOJ, unless three conditions were met, the most important of which was a promise from EchoStar to carry local stations. On this critical matter, Ergen has given opponents, including the National Association of Broadcasters, more ammunition than they should legally have (which allows those in the cable industry concerned about the proposed merger to sit back as the NAB chips away at Ergen).

On March 6, the Senate Anti-Trust Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee held a hearing in which there was, by Hill standards, minimal grandstanding and a lot of substance. Ergen, Hartenstein, Kimmelman, Robert Pitofsky (the former head of the Federal Trade Commission), NAB president Eddie Fritts and even the attorney general of Missouri all testified. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) the subcommittee chair, and Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), the ranking Republican, both said they couldn't see how the deal could avoid violating antitrust laws. They also were worried about Ergen's promise of local carriage, and they didn't see how he could promise a pricing strategy that would give all rural customers the same breaks as urban ones, especially if cable companies started a campaign to undercut DBS prices.

Hartenstein finessed these issues with aplomb. As soon as Kohl employed sarcasm to zero in on the incongruity of Ergen's proposed national pricing strategy, Ergen became testy and thus began a several-minute-long exchange that pitted Ergen the business mogul against Kohl the U.S. Senate Committee chairman. That kind of match almost always goes to the senator.

Kimmelman was dumbfounded, because he knew Ergen was armed with the right answers. But once Kohl's tone turned, Ergen appeared to Kimmelman to suddenly confuse humility with hubris. The former goes much further in Washington.

"Charlie could have handled the price strategy questions much better," Kimmelman says. In his view, Ergen should not have proposed a regional pricing plan that would ensure that people who lived on the farms of Ohio didn't pay more for satellite TV than the folks in Cleveland.

In the end, it was Kimmelman who saved the day, according to Hill staffers and lobbyists who were present. Time and again, he fielded probing questions about the radical proposal that the satellite and cable areas be considered one market for the purposes of bypassing the antitrust hurdle and tossed them neatly back at Ergen's opponents. Even Kohl was impressed, and afterward, congressional staffers concurred that Kimmelman was the best thing Ergen and EchoStar had going for them. That, and Ergen's promise under oath to carry local stations in all 210 markets.