FCC Vote Could Give TV Viewers Choices
Posted: Thursday January 21, 2010
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
Television viewers may soon find that cable isn’t the only game in town for local sports and news following a Federal Communications Commission ruling Wednesday.
In an effort to give consumers more choice, regulators voted 4-to-1 to put pressure on cable operators that own local sports and news channels to let satellite and phone companies carry the channels.
For example, Comcast (CCS) has kept the Philadelphia Phillies, 76ers and Flyers off of DirecTV (DTV). Cablevision (CVC) doesn’t let Verizon (VZ) carry high-definition signals for the New York Knicks and Rangers. And Cox bars AT&T from offering San Diego Padres games.
The FCC action “is a big-time victory for television sports fans,” says Kathleen Grillo, Verizon’s senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs.
DirecTV Senior Vice President Susan Eid says, “We’re thrilled.”
The commission hopes to close what it says is a loophole in the federal Cable Act of 1992.
The law requires cable companies to share channels that they own and distribute to local systems via satellite. But cable companies say that doesn’t apply to local sports and news that they distribute over land lines.
The FCC hopes to change that by asserting its authority to overturn unfair practices. The new ruling says that the commission will presume that withholding a channel is unfair, unless the cable operator can prove otherwise.
Viewers shouldn’t be forced “to choose between the sports teams they love and the provider they prefer,” says FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
Consumer advocates had hoped for stronger action. The FCC took “an important, but modest, step forward,” says Parul Desai, vice president of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm.
Still, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett says it’s “widely expected that Comcast will sue” to stop the change. Operators have said that if they have to share it would reduce their incentive to invest in local programming.
Moffett says DirecTV and Dish Network (DISH) only have 16% of the market in Philadelphia, half of what they have elsewhere, “largely due” to the lack of local sports.
Comcast declined to comment on the FCC ruling.
Cablevision said the legal basis for it is “unfounded” — and vowed to fight efforts to make it share its local sports and news.
“If the phone companies complain that they are unable to compete, we are confident that we can prove that it is for a variety of reasons, none of which have to do with HD sports programming,” says Cablevision Vice President Kim Kerns.