OPINION:
Broadcasters popped champagne corks Wednesday when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee canceled an expected vote on a “local choice” measure its backers said would have given cable- and satellite-TV customers more control over their channel choices. Like so many things in Washington, pretty words were used to disguise an attempt by one industry to use the government to punish the competition.
Cable and satellite providers are locked in a never-ending tussle with broadcast stations over “retransmission rights.” NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and other popular over-the-air networks get to set the price for their content. When they ask too much, cable companies are free to tell the networks no thanks, as Time Warner told CBS last year. Screens went dark and customers missed favorite shows until a deal was struck. A separate “must-carry” rule forces cable and satellite packages to include tiny broadcast stations that few watch.
There’s nothing particularly fair about this, but changing what’s been in place for more than a decade tilts the scales. What Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, a Democrat, and John Thune of South Dakota, a Republican, proposed to do was to eliminate the unpopular blackouts by enabling the broadcasters to charge cable and satellite customers directly. This is the provision withdrawn on Wednesday.
Other provisions would insert the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into the negotiating room, armed with new price-control regulations. The FCC could demand information “as it deems necessary” to ensure that the cable companies and broadcasters are negotiating in “good faith.” The bill further requires the FCC to monitor negotiations and determine whether a content owner’s decision to deny its content online is a “per se” violation of “good faith” rules. Both mandates clearly put the heavy hand of government into what should be private negotiations. It’s an invitation to cronyism.
Federal agencies rarely show restraint after they are handed blanket authority of this size. The FCC in particular has a history of shutting down speech with the “Fairness Doctrine” that kept conservatives off the radio waves until the FCC repealed the rule during the Reagan administration.
The television industry is one of the most highly regulated in the nation, and it’s small wonder that consumers are infuriated by how the system works. In many ways, this is a tussle between fading giants. Technology is advancing toward a model where consumers will watch what they want and when they want over the Internet, which bypasses many of the obstacles put up by overzealous regulators.
The answer isn’t to invite more government decision-making. In the absence of true market reform, the status quo is preferable to yet another FCC power grab.
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