The NCTA criticized proposals from USTelecom that the cable association...
The NCTA criticized proposals from USTelecom that the cable association said would have the commission prejudge, in carriage disputes, in favor of competing MVPDs “virtually all of the key issues relevant to assessing the competitive impact of an exclusive contract”…
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between a cable operator and network it owns (http://xrl.us/bnshpu). The FCC’s ban on such exclusive contracts is set to expire Friday. USTelecom’s approach “is tantamount to extending the per se ban,” the NCTA said. “Just as there is no factual or legal basis for retaining the per se ban ... there is no justification to adding new burdens to the standard for case-by-case adjudication of program access complaint,” it said. There’s no basis for adopting special presumptions for the “top 20” cable-affiliated networks, or for regional sports networks (RSNs) or networks that carry lots of sports programming, it said. “Unlike the presumption for terrestrially-delivered RSNs, which was at least based on some record of evidence and studies, such an expansive presumption would have absolutely no evidentiary support,” it said. It also attacked arguments that the commission should adopt a preemption that exclusive contracts involving such networks is “unfair” and “significantly hinders competition,” it said. An attorney for Time Warner Cable raised similar arguments during a meeting with Commissioner Ajit Pai’s chief of staff, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnshq3). “The Commission should reject recent proposals to presume that withholding any RSN programming or certain other content necessarily” is an unfair act, hinders competition, or entitles a complainant to injunctive relief. Former Wireless Bureau Chief Fred Campbell wrote on the Communications Liberty and Innovation Project Blog that the FCC should let the ban expire this week (http://xrl.us/bnshrd). “With the exception of sports programming, which ‘may be nonreplicable,’ the program access concerns that animated congress in 1992 no longer exist,” he wrote. He pointed to Netflix’s recent investments in developing its own programming as a success where there’s no regulation guaranteeing it a right to access other’s content. “Verizon, AT&T and the satellite providers are, however, eligible for statutory access to cable programming, which reduces their incentives to invest in their own programming.”