NBCUniversal looks to challenge Apple TV+ and Netflix next April
NBCUniversal looks to challenge Apple TV+ and Netflix next April
Cynthia Littleton for Variety:
Comcast units are double down on the content and streaming wars as NBCUniversal plans to launch its advertising-supported streaming platform in April and Sky is vowing to double the volume of original content it delivers with an emphasis on European material.
NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke and Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch talked up the company’s content options during…
Public Has a Right to See FCC’s Proposed Video Regs
Seeking Public Comment is Transparency 101
WASHINGTON — Last month, the FCC delayed a vote on the Chairman’s proposal to impose radical new regulations on the video marketplace, with other Commissioners saying the item still raised too many open questions. Today, TechFreedom and a diverse coalition of groups urged FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to release his proposed set-top box regulations so that the public may comment upon this critical proposal.
The coalition letter filed today with the FCC supports a petition filed by nineteen civil rights groups on Sunday asking the FCC to seek further public comment on its plan to regulate video content in the name of driving competition for set-top boxes. Since the beginning of this proceeding, the Chairman has faced overwhelming opposition to his plan, including from Congressional Democrats, fellow FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, minority and independent programmers, Congressmen of both parties, cable and satellite providers, and civil society groups.
The letter states:
Since the Chairman has refused to share the current proposal, it is impossible to know exactly what is in it, and other Commissioners are prohibited by Commission rules from discussing the details of the proposal. But their public statements indicate that the nature of the proposal has changed significantly from the FCC’s initial proposal, and still raises significant legal and policy concerns.
Moreover, little more than two weeks ago, Commissioner Rosenworcel said of the Chairman’s plan in Congressional testimony, “I just don't think we have the authority." The fact that the Chairman had to postpone a vote on this item at last week’s open meeting — the first such postponement in his chairmanship — makes clear that this item requires a full reconsideration.
“Any time the FCC needs to perform radical surgery on proposed regulations, it must seek public comment again,” said Berin Szóka, President of TechFreedom. “That’s Transparency 101. Merely suspending the ironically-named ‘Sunshine’ restrictions to allow public comment isn’t enough: the public needs to see what the FCC is voting on. Indeed, suspending Sunshine without releasing the draft order would make the process less transparent: it would allow the Chairman to manipulate the process by selectively leaking to favored lobbyists who, in turn, could help the Chairman pressure his fellow Democratic Commissioners to comply in a last-minute frenzy to finish writing the order just before it’s voted on. That kind of broken process is exactly what then-Senator Obama warned against in 2007. The American people deserve better before the FCC starts tampering with the industry that has led to a Golden Age of American television.”
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We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. See our other work on the video marketplace, including:
Our statement on the revised proposal
Our comments opposing the FCC’s set-top box proposal
Our statement on the apps-based alternative to the FCC’s proposal
Having dropped $48 billion and change last year to acquire DirecTV, AT&T is now earmarking tens of billions more over the next 3 to 5 years to acquire media companies, according to a report this week by Bloomberg. Citing “people familiar with the plans,” the report said AT&T is targeting acquisitions ranging from $2 billion to $50 billion, with an eye toward “owning some of the content it…
Why MVPDs, Studios Won't Take Yes For An Answer on STBs
Why MVPDs, Studios Won’t Take Yes For An Answer on STBs
When Federal Communications Chairman Tom Wheeler unveiled his initial proposal to “unlock” the pay-TV set-top box back in January, pay-TV service providers and programmers howled in protest. Operators complained that the proposal, which called for multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs) to make their video feeds, channel listings, and subscriber entitlement data available to third-party…
FCC’s Set-Top Box Proposal is Illegal and Unnecessary
WASHINGTON D.C. — TechFreedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed comments Friday opposing the FCC’s plan to force video providers to open up programming to be used on set-top boxes from third-party providers. The FCC claims its “Unlock the Box” proposal is necessary to increase competition in video and allow consumers to access programming without having to lease a set-top box from their multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs). But the industry is already moving to “Eliminate the Box” by offering programming in their own apps.
A technical advisory committee convened by the FCC last year issued two alternative recommendations. The Apps-Based Proposal would have ensured that all MVPDs make such apps available, ending the need for leasing a set-top box from the MVPD. But the FCC completely ignored this proposal, and instead focused only on the alternative proposal that requires MVPDs to unbundle their content so that third-party developers can repackage it into their own apps. This, in turn, creates a host of privacy and piracy problems while, ironically, entrenching the set-top box.
“The FCC’s proposal makes for good headlines, but it’s doomed to fail in court,” warned Berin Szóka, President of TechFreedom. “The ‘96 Telecom Act commands the FCC to ensure the availability of ‘devices’ and ‘equipment’ from independent parties. The Apps-Based Proposal would have ensured that Americans could watch their MVPD’s content on whatever device they like — on the MVPD’s app. Yet the FCC seems to think that having to toggle between the Xfinity app and Netflix constitutes a national emergency requiring the agency to rewrite the statute. It takes colossal chutzpah to claim that an app can be a ‘device’ — a claim that is obviously absurd to anyone who’s bothered to read the 1996 Telecom Act. The idea should also be chilling to those who’ve long assumed that Silicon Valley was safe from the FCC’s imperialism. As with last year’s Open Internet Order, the FCC has erased whatever line that might once have separated software from hardware and infrastructure.”
“This is part of a consistent pattern — from net neutrality to prison payphone rates, the FCC simply does not care what its statutes say,” continued Szóka. “Chairman Wheeler does precisely what D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel warned about when he said that all too many ‘agencies choose their policy first and then later seek to defend its legality.’ It’s not just bad lawyering or the fact that the courts have upheld all kinds of insane interpretations under the deferential standard of Chevron. No, the real point is populism: winning in court matters less than focusing the media fight on issues like this, which are obviously huge winners for the Digital Left and losers for Republicans who have struggled to explain just how cynical the FCC’s moves really are. This is now the third time that President Obama has interfered with the supposedly independent FCC, casting aside any pretense that the outcome of an FCC proceeding isn’t predetermined by ideology.”
“The most bizarre part of the NPRM is that it invokes an obscure provision that gives the President sweeping powers in wartime and emergencies,” concluded Szóka. “It’s hard to decipher the FCC’s passing reference to Section 706 of the 1934 Communications Act in the ‘legal authority’ paragraph at the end of the NPRM. But the idea of using this dormant Internet kill-switch should terrify those who imagine the FCC is on the side of ‘Internet Freedom.’ It’s certainly possible the FCC meant to cite Section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. That’s the one the FCC has claimed allows it to regulate any form of communications in any way that promotes broadband — also an absurd claim that gives the FCC sweeping powers over the entire Internet. Ether Wheeler already has his hands on the kill-switch or his legal staff is even more cavalier about reading their statutes than anyone could have imagined.”
The table of contents of our comments provides a succinct summary of our arguments against the FCC’s order.
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We are available for comment at [email protected]. See our other work on video markets and promoting broadband deployment:
Our statement on the FCC’s rushed NPRM on regulating set-top boxes
Our statement on the FCC’s announcement on unlocking the set-top box market
Comments from TechFreedom, ICLE, and CEI urging the FCC not to regulate online video providers in the same way as cable
Intervenor Brief and Reply Brief of TechFreedom on the FCC’s Open Internet Order
WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, Comcast took one giant leap toward killing the set-top box. The company launched its Xfinity TV Partner Program, which will allow all Comcast TV subscribers to watch video programming on their smart TVs, streaming media players, and other connected devices — without having to lease any set-top boxes. This announcement comes only two days before initial comments are due in response to the FCC’s February NPRM, proposing rules that would require video providers to open up their programming to be used on set-top boxes from third-party providers.
“The FCC has proposed an elaborate way to ‘Unlock the Box’ by regulation, but the market has responded with a simple solution to do what consumers really want — Eliminate the Box,” said Berin Szóka, President of TechFreedom. “Regulators always lag behind technology, but usually, it doesn’t become obvious how behind they are until years of litigation. Today’s news shows why the FCC’s approach has been unnecessary from the start. This isn’t some kind of last minute ‘Hail Mary’ pass by industry made only under pressure from the FCC — this must have started at least early last year, and it’s being done by industry to cut their own costs, reduce hassle for consumers, and compete with increasingly popular Internet-only services. That’s why video providers united last summer to propose an apps-based model to the FCC — which Tom Wheeler simply ignored.”
“The FCC’s proposal isn’t really about making TV easier for consumers or moving past the box,” said Szóka. “Indeed, it could slow video competition by hamstringing new over-the-top services with new regulatory mandates. It’s really about trying to unravel the contracts and copyrights of video programmers. That may sound like a good idea to copyright-skeptics, but it threatens to upend the business model that has produced the Golden Age of Television. Most of all, it threatens small and independent programmers. That’s why many minority programmers are up in arms — and why Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have insisted the FCC should have done basic economic analysis about how unbundling content would affect diversity in media. Sadly, neither the FCC nor the President seem to care. As with net neutrality, this issue has nothing to do with serving consumers and everything to do with ideology and picking market winners and losers.”
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We are available for comment at [email protected]. See our other work on video markets:
Our statement on the FCC’s rushed NPRM on regulating set-top boxes
Our statement on the FCC’s announcement on unlocking the set-top box market
Comments from TechFreedom, ICLE, and CEI urging the FCC not to regulate online video providers in the same way as cable
Comments urging the FCC to approve the merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable without conditions
Somewhere, Steve Jobs is smiling. Nearly six years after the late Apple CEO complained that real innovation in the TV industry could only happen if you first “tear up” the traditional pay-TV set-top box, the FCC is taking the first steps toward doing just that. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler this week announced that the commission will vote next month on whether to proceed with a formal rulemaking to…
FCC’s War on Set-Top Boxes is Short-Sighted and a Costly Distraction
WASHINGTON D.C. — Yesterday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced his plans to force pay-tv or multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to change their existing equipment to allow third-party set-top boxes to carry their signals. Currently, MVPD subscribers typically pay $15–20/month to lease set-top boxes from their cable, satellite, or telco video provider. Those set-top boxes allow subscribers to view video programming on their TVs and, in some cases, also provide access to online video distributors (OVDs) such as Netflix and Hulu. However, Chairman Wheeler and some interest groups say those leasing fees are too high, that MVPDs have a stranglehold on video programming, and that the set-top box market must be opened to competition from third parties.
In 2010, first with its CableCARD and then with its AllVid proposals, the FCC sought to open up the set-top box market by mandating the adoption of standards that were open and interoperable with third party equipment. However, these plans wound up being expensive to implement — because TV programmers need strong security to protect their copyrighted content — and eventually the FCC decided any potential benefits from the proposal would not justify its costs.
“We’ve been down this road before — it didn’t make sense in 2010 and it makes even less sense now,” said Tom Struble, Policy Counsel at TechFreedom. “Consumers have never enjoyed more ways to watch video. The market for video is fiercely competitive — Amazon and Google offer cheap ways to stream content to TVs from computers and mobile devices, and Netflix now has more subscribers in the U.S. than any MVPD. And even when people still subscribe to cable, they’re increasingly watching video over-the-top, as major companies like DISH and Comcast have launched OVD services.”
“Getting the government involved in product design is a terrible idea,” continued Struble. “Mandating that MVPDs change their technology is costly and may subject their content to widespread piracy. There are better ways to promote competition in video markets. Instead of selectively focusing on the marginal issue of set-top boxes, the FCC should focus on making broadband deployment easier and promoting facilities-based competition at the local level between MVPDs. That, more than anything, would help drive innovation, keep prices down, and promote continued growth in the market for video content.”
“It’s clear that politics is behind the FCC’s push for a set-top box mandate,” concluded Struble. “As the debate over net neutrality and Title II demonstrated, the FCC is perfectly comfortable with picking winners and losers in the marketplace. It’s no surprise that the companies on the short end of the set-top box proposal are the same firms challenging the FCC’s Open Internet Order in court. Even with MVPDs in decline and OVDs on the rise, the FCC is charging blindly into more regulation without showing a need for new rules or studying the potential adverse effects of disrupting existing business arrangements.”
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We are available for comment at [email protected]. See our other work on video markets and promoting broadband deployment:
Comments from TechFreedom, ICLE, and CEI urging the FCC not to regulate online video providers in the same way as cable
Comments urging the FCC to approve the merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable without conditions
A roadmap by which governments at all levels can promote broadband deployment
