Incompas, NTCA Defend Video Market Survey in Face of NAB Criticisms
An NAB-criticized Incompas/NTCA survey was never meant to be a broad measure of the video market, but was intended to "demonstrate the reality" members face as access to programming remains a large hurdle to serving residential customers, the telecom associations…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
said in an FCC filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-216. The aim was to partially quantify anecdotes the groups had been hearing for years, and did its job "as it reaffirms the direct link between the offering of video programming and broadband adoption rates, the challenges small businesses and new entrants face when trying to negotiate content contracts and provides a percentage comparison between the rising costs of broadcast and non-broadcast content," Incompas and NTCA said. NAB had criticized the survey as flawed and devoid of any evidence of a dysfunctional video market (see 1510290027) -- criticisms Incompas and NTCA called "inflammatory language and specious accusations." That content costs climb while consumer choice has increased demonstrates market failure, Incompas and NTCA said. They urged NAB to talk to members about waiving nondisclosure clauses in contracts "so that the public and policy makers can finally see for themselves how this 'marketplace' is really working." An NAB spokesman Tuesday said the organization "is not in the business of dictating contractual terms of retransmission contracts for our member companies. However, we do believe that if we polled our members, we would find unanimous frustration with how pay TV companies are using their customers as pawns in attempting to create a retrans crisis, hoping against hope that the FCC will inject itself into private, free-market negotiations that almost always end successfully.”