FCC Video Competition Report Said to Contain Few Surprises
The FCC’s 15th annual video competition report, in the same format as last year’s report, contains few surprises, said agency official in interviews. “It’s very close to last year’s report,” said an agency official. The report is due to be voted on by the commission Friday, the first time in several years the commission has kept to the annual schedule mandated by the 1996 Telecom Act. The 14th report was released last year, but the 13th came out in 2009. The 14th report contained data on the rise of online video distributors, the cost to multichannel video programming distributors of acquiring content, the effect of ISP data caps on competition (CD July 23/11 p6).
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The 15th report will contain data about rising retransmission consent fees and difficulties within the cable industry, FCC officials said. The American Cable Association had asked the commission to focus on broadcasters jointly negotiating retrans agreements and “the regulatory and non-regulatory conditions” contributing to cable system closures (CD July 9 p14). Since the report is intended to inform Congress about video competition issues, it’s important to cable operators that their industry’s concerns get included, said ACA Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman by email. “Congress asked the FCC to provide them an annual report on the state of video competition, and we believe that such a report should cover the relevant competition matters."
It’s possible that the 15th video competition report could be the last. The House Communications Subcommittee recently held a hearing on a bill to consolidate many of the FCC’s reports into a single one (CD July 10 p5), and the GAO issued a study earlier this year advising that the commission’s many reports be combined (CD June 26 p8). A Media Bureau spokeswoman had no comment for this story.
The content of the report is unlikely to have much effect on larger policy issues like retrans, said Fletcher Heald cable attorney Paul Feldman. “Whatever is in it will be used by various parties to support their various policies,” he said. “But I think it’s unlikely that the content of the report would swing the issue.”