Press releases are all very well, but it seems that to signify a proper change in policy what one needs nowadays is a blog post. At least that seems to have been Tom Wheeler, FCC Chairman’s thinking last week when he lit the blue touch paper under a potential rule change that could make internet TV really take off. And, somewhat predictably, not everyone is happy.
Not for the first time, but perhaps this time it might have loaded the bases in its favour, the FCC in the US is floating a rule change that would put internet TV providers — multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) in the jargon — on the same footing as cable companies when it comes to certain key regulations. Critically, it would mean that broadcasters wouldn't be able to refuse to let an internet TV provider carry their own content.
"Consumers have long complained about how their cable service forces them to buy channels they never watch,” wrote Wheeler. "The move of video onto the internet can do something about that frustration – but first internet video services need access to the programmes. Today the FCC takes the first step to open access to cable programmes as well as local television."
The FCC hopes to fulfil its avowedly free-market mantra of 'Competition, competition, competition' and give consumers in the US the ability to buy the programmes they want from the suppliers they want.
This is nothing really new. Congress put in place similar rules to help the then nascent US satellite industry in the early 1990s, and this is just an extension of the same; taking the requirement of having a facilities-based transmission path out of the equation. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.
"The definition of an MVPD should turn on the services that a provider offers, not on how those services reach viewers. Twenty-first century consumers shouldn’t be shackled to rules that only recognise 20th century technology,” writes Wheeler.
As you might surmise, this has not gone down well in certain quarters, namely the head ones of the US National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). “Redefining what it means to be an MVPD raises profound questions about how government will extend regulation to Internet video services and how any would-be virtual MVPDs will meet their 'social compact' obligations,” it thundered.
Now this is interesting. The social compact dates back to 1934 and is largely guff, and unenforced guff at that. In exchange for their licensed airwaves, broadcasters were to be required to fulfil the standard (at the time) Reithian doctrine of airing programming that served the “public convenience, interest, or necessity.”
This has evolved over the years to paying lip service to locally-oriented public affairs and political, educational, and cultural programming, but with no minimum standards set or enforced it is largely ignored. How about this for a takedown of the whole thing:
“Most broadcasters today air very little of this sort of public interest programming, and some air none of it at all. Nevertheless, Congress and the FCC continue to confer onto broadcasters all of the privileges of public trusteeship, including, most recently, the assignment of a new, lucrative digital television channel at no cost to them. By contrast, other FCC licensees, including landline and wireless telecommunications providers, paid in excess of $23 billion for certain digital licenses in spectrum auctions conducted over a four-year period in the 1990s.”
(Anthony E. Varona - University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform)
Perhaps the likes of the NCTA really ought to be careful what they wish for…
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