FCC must reject efforts to revive discredited plan
Alternative option would protect both television industry and consumers
For the last few years, partisanship has gripped Washington, D.C., on issues both big and small, inundating us with political talking heads angrily shouting past each other on television.
Yet, one issue has recently produced rare bipartisan consensus, bringing together more than 190 members of Congress and making unlikely allies of diverse voices from the creative community, labor organizations, free market advocates and civil rights advocacy groups.
The issue driving this dramatic departure from the partisan norm is a new Federal Communications Commission proposal to regulate, of all things, the set-top boxes you probably use to navigate your cable or satellite TV service.
In February, the commission introduced a new proposal aimed at creating competition in the market for set-top boxes, arguing it would save TV viewers the cost of having to rent a box each month. This goal was hardly controversial; as a cable customer, the FCC had me at “hello.”
Unfortunately, underneath the slogans, the substance of the FCC’s proposal was deeply flawed. The commission proposed to require TV providers to unbundle their video service into individualized raw video streams that any third-party tech company could then freely re-assemble into competing apps and services.
If adopted, this proposal would have marked the first time the FCC ever endorsed the legalized theft of copyrighted works.
This would be a windfall for Silicon Valley tech companies, which would gain a federal license to poach valuable television and film programming, sell new ads around the content and mine customers’ private viewing data — all without having to negotiate content rights or pay a single penny to the networks and artists who actually create and own the programming.
Giving tech companies free access to our content would massively devalue our programming, while allowing these competitors to sell ads against our own content without sharing any of the revenue would undermine the entire market for ad-supported television.
Independent programmers serving niche and minority audiences — like Vme TV — would be at the greatest risk. But, like any great TV story, there has been an unexpected plot twist.
Before our industry could be steamrolled by this deeply flawed federal mandate and in the face of an overwhelming, bipartisan outcry, policymakers expressed an honest willingness to listen to alternatives.
Industry leaders recently responded by putting forward a new approach that would allow consumers to ditch rented set-top boxes and watch TV instead through downloaded apps that could still protect content, uphold copyright and preserve consumer privacy protections. Using apps instead of boxes means viewers could say goodbye to monthly rental fees.
This alternative framework calls for all major TV providers to offer apps built on an open-technology standard that would let any manufacturer enter the market with new alternatives to traditional rented set-top boxes.
Consumers would soon have more options for devices that would let them search for and watch programming from both traditional pay-TV services and streaming video alternatives like Netflix, without needing to change cables, inputs or remotes.
To be clear, we haven’t reached the closing credits yet. Key details still need to be worked out.
And just as all great story boards require a persistent villain, the tech industry and its lobbyists who first pushed for this monstrous proposal continue to fight in the shadows of D.C. to bring that discredited plan back to life.
The FCC should reject these desperate efforts to revive the deeply flawed mandate, especially when alternatives are now on the table that will achieve the commission’s goals without devastating the marketplace for quality TV programming.
As an executive at a TV network whose very survival could be at risk from a poorly conceived FCC mandate, I’m hopeful that commissioners will have the courage and good judgment to continue forward on this path toward a pro-consumer, appsbased alternative.