MPAA Backs Keeping Exclusivity Rules, Warning of Repeal Effects on Content
Hollywood is backing broadcaster efforts to keep FCC syndicated exclusivity rules. Since "anachronistic" compulsory copyright license rules inherently mean content can't be distributed in a free market governed by contractual agreements, the network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules need to…
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stand, the MPAA said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 10-71. It cited a litany of arguments for keeping the rules Chairman Tom Wheeler has indicated he wants to revoke (see 1508120051). Broadcasters have descended recently on the agency seeking to keep the rules (see 1509100049). Axing those rules "would remove an essential counterbalance" to compulsory licenses, "jeopardizing the ability of program suppliers to provide viewers with robust and diverse programming," MPAA said. It said the rules mitigate some of the market impact of compulsory licenses "by returning to broadcast programming suppliers some of the discretion over distribution of their content that the statutory licenses take away." Ending those rules also would fly in the face of Congress' determination in the Satellite Television and Localism Act Reauthorization that GAO should study possible effects of phasing out compulsory licenses, with a June 4, deadline on that report, MPAA said. Without exclusivity rules, stations will lose ad revenue and end up "far less likely to invest in high-value content or take a risk on anything other than mass appeal programming," MPAA said. That ends up eroding the ability of content producers "to justify the significant upfront investment in the development and production of content," it said. The FCC's own history of eliminating the syndicated exclusivity rules in 1980 -- only to reinstate them eight years later -- should illustrate the harms, since the agency itself said the revenue lost by broadcasters and program suppliers, and thus the program diversity lost by viewers, was worse than expected, MPAA said.