Communications reform proposals winding their way through Congress all have something of a shotgun marriage feel to them. The pairing of franchise reform and 'net neutrality' has no purpose save for opportunism. The two issues have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and indeed work at cross-purposes to the extent franchise reform encourages competition and net neutrality stifles it at the broadband service level.
The most peculiar strange bedfellow provision lies in Senator Stevens's reform bill. The bill takes a proper wait-and-see attitude toward net neutrality, yet suffers from no such humility in dealing with local sports programming. Section 400, euphemistically titled "Sports Freedom," outlaws exclusive contracts between video providers and sports teams or leagues. The effect, then, is to unbundle local sports programming and make it available to all-comers. (Interestingly, a broader version of this rule would prohibit the Direct TV NFL Sunday Ticket, but the bill dare not go that far.) In other words, as with all programming rules, the bill dictates what private arrangements are permissible based on the unproven assertion that competition is impossible absent this unbundling.