June 2014

Communications Subcommittee chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) made it clear what he thought of the Federal Communications Commission's recent activity, and inactivity, on media ownership rules.

"Pretending laws designed for an era before smartphones and the Internet will get the job done is an effective death sentence for many local media outlets," he said. That came in opening statements at a hearing on media ownership rules, part of the parent House Commerce Committee's ongoing review of communications regulations, as well as a response to some current events like the joint sales agreement (JSA) ruling and the decision to role the 2010 and 2014 quadrennial reviews into one targeted for mid-year 2016.

Rep Walden said everyone was committed to the core values promoting localism, diversity and competition, but his view was that was best served by not hampering broadcasters ability to compete.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has asked the Federal Communications Commission not to eliminate its Sports Blackout Rule.

That rule backstops sports league broadcast blackout policies by preventing cable or satellite operators from carrying the blacked-out games to those local markets. The FCC has proposed scrapping the rule.

In a letter to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, the conference said the rule "serve[s] the interests of states as well as the public by [helping to promote] economic activity, civic pride and the broadcast of professional football on free, over-the-air television."

The FCC rule helps promote attendance, the conference points out, and the stadiums, whose economic activity is boosted by getting fans in the seats, are often built partly with taxpayer dollars, they point out. "Thus, states share a stake in the continued use, success and vitality of sports facilities."

As the political push to curb digital spying remains mired in debate, those who produce the technological wonders of our age are fixing on a more direct response: If you can’t legislate privacy, build it in.

It is against this backdrop that many in the technological community are applauding the decision by Apple to tweak how the iPhone searches for wi-fi connections. Through a relatively simple software update, the company plans to undermine a widely deployed system that stores such as Nordstrom have used to track the movements of customers to analyze shopping habits.

Sen Al Franken (D-MN), who has proposed legislation banning such tracking except when customers explicitly choose to participate, said, “Companies are tracking your movements when you go shopping without your knowledge -- and often when you don’t even enter a store. Apple’s decision to protect their users against this form of tracking is a smart and powerful move for privacy.”

[Commentary] Broadcasters recently launched a front group with the apparent purpose of attacking pay-TV providers and making enough noise to distract from reforming our broken retransmission consent system that victimizes the public.

They named their new group TVFreedom, perhaps to misdirect from the fact that for decades they’ve actually opposed freedom of choice for TV viewers.

If the basic tier mandate is so critical to public safety, where is the evidence that the lack of such a mandate for the satellite companies has led to any harms?

Broadcasters are currently squatting on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of spectrum that they’re not using other than to provide 8% of the American public with “local” TV -- if and when those users can receive a decent broadcast signal. And local television isn’t even local anymore. Only one out of two TV stations actually shows local news. Further, 50% of the money collected in retransmission consent fees goes back to New York City to pay for expensive network programming, which is the exact opposite of what retransmission was supposed to do.

The broadcasters cannot -- and should not be allowed by the media -- to get away with claiming that retransmission consent amounts to the free market at the same time they fight to protect the government requirement that cable and telecom providers carry certain broadcast TV channels. Nor should they be able to claim retransmission consent is the free market when they tie carriage of the expensive cable channels they own to the local TV stations.

The basic tier is a relic of a bygone era when broadcasters were the only game in town. New technologies have disrupted this monopoly and now broadcasters are fighting to save a dying business model. Protecting an archaic monopoly is never good public policy.

[Frederick, PhD, is spokesman for the American Television Alliance]