The The Other Side Of The Net Neutrality Coin

[Commentary] My column saying that broadcasters were among the winners in the Federal Communication Commission's new network neutrality rules was challenged by Bonten Media Group's Randy Bongarten. I had it all wrong, he said. As a TV medium, broadcasters' great advantage is their ability to deliver programming to the most people at the lowest cost, he said. What net neutrality will do is strip broadcasting of that advantage by allowing big companies like Netflix, Amazon and Google to distribute TV over the Internet at artificially low prices. As heavy users of the Internet, Netflix and its ilk should have to pay more, not less, to broadband providers.

"But net neutrality will prohibit the cable companies or other distributors from charging the real market value of their products and services. "What’s happening here really amounts to a subsidy for Netflix to allow them to be able to distribute their programming on equal terms at lower costs than they would otherwise have to pay." If nothing else, Bongarten made me appreciate more the complexity of the issue. He made me think again. But I remain thoroughly convinced on one point I made last week. With the stakes for broadcasters not entirely clear and the politics fraught, the National Association of Broadcasters was smart not to get mixed up in it.