National Association of Broadcasters Takes Aim at Mega-Merged Pay-TV Providers

The National Association of Broadcasters says that given the size of multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) behemoths like the newly combined Charter/Time Warner Cable, the recently combined AT&T/DirecTV and the not-so-recently merged Comcast/NBCU, the Federal Communications Commission is obligated to either repeal or loosen local ownership regulations to allow them to better compete.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has promised to circulate an item resolving 2010 and 2014 media ownership rule reviews mandated by Congress this month, and a federal court has recently signaled it has to do so ASAP--sources signaled that item will likely not circulate until the end of the month. NAB, in a letter to the FCC, spent pages waving red flags about merging MVPDs and their market power while suggesting broadcasters were being prevented from competing with those behemoths due to unreasonable regs. "While the FCC in 2014 effectively prohibited one TV station from selling more than 15 percent of another same-market TV station’s advertising time, the Commission has approved numerous MVPD mergers despite the companies’ high shares of the entire MVPD marketplace in numerous local markets," said NAB. "As of last fall, according to Yahoo Finance," said NAB, "AT&T/DirecTV had a market capitalization of $201 billion and Verizon had a market cap of $182 billion, while TV station group owners such as Media General, Scripps and Nexstar had market caps of $1 billion each. Aside from the giant telcos, the largest cable operator (Comcast) had a market cap 142 times larger than these broadcasters, and the combined Charter/TWC/Bright House an estimated market cap 72 times larger."