Breaking Up The TV Cartel Is In The Public Interest
The Justice Department is making moves toward unwinding the stranglehold that today cable cartel has on the US TV marketplace, especially with regard to anti-competitive practices against non-cable players, like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple.
Justice Department Is Said to Investigate Cable Companies Over Internet Video - Brian Stelter and Edward Wyatt via NYTimes.com
The Justice Department is quietly investigating the cable industry’s behavior toward nascent online video competitors as part of an inquiry into possible anticompetitive practices by cable companies.
The investigation raises the prospect that the government’s antitrust lawyers will intervene in the complex and rapidly changing business of entertainment distribution. In the meantime, it raises new questions about an industry that has no shortage of them already.
Answers are probably not immediately forthcoming. As is typical in cases like this, the Justice Department declined to comment on the investigation or to confirm that it is taking place. But people with direct knowledge of the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed, as first reported Tuesday night by The Wall Street Journal, that the department was examining broad changes in the marketplace for online video, including the use of Internet data caps by cable companies.
One of the issues involves whether those limits to the amount of video, audio and other data that users can download are discriminatory against Netflix, YouTube and other new digital video competitors. Comcast, in particular, has come under scrutiny for its past use of data caps and other network management practices.
The US model for today’s Old TV distribution is based on a/ free broadcast TV (which a declining number of people take advantage of) and b/ for fee cable (and satellite) TV (that a dominant and growing proportion of the population rely on).
Local governments grant cable companies the right to a cable monopoly (usually a duopoly) in a geographic area, allowing them to charge a fee for TV service. Likewise, the US government allows similar models for satellite companies. The Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPD’s) like Comcast and DirecTV also provide internet access to their customers, which at first they saw as simply an additional source of revenue. But now that we can stream video over the web, it’s become a huge competitive threat to their entrenched interests.
One result is the intransigence of cable companies regarding unbundling channels. Many users would like to not be forced to buy 70 channels in order to watch NBA games, or would like to just watch Game Of Thrones without the rest of HBO’s lineup.
Justice Department Is Said to Investigate Cable Companies Over Internet Video - Brian Stelter and Edward Wyatt via NYTimes.com
The department is also said to be studying the ways in which distributors bundle disparate television channels together in all-you-can-watch packages. Distributors and programmers have resisted calls to unbundle channels, but Internet distribution may give consumers more choices in that area — assuming that data caps or other network management practices do not stand in the way.
It is unclear whether the government inquiry is looking solely at cable and broadband Internet providers, or whether it is also examining other types, like satellite television providers. The two largest satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, declined to comment.
The inquiry is important because precedents for the digital distribution of content are being set now, said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a public interest group based in Washington, which welcomed news of the investigation. “This is the critical moment,” he said. “If the government doesn’t step in to protect public interest now, you’re going to lose your chance.”
The review was also welcome news to those who have argued that concerns about control over digital distribution should be addressed through antitrust law enforcement, rather than through pre-emptive regulation.
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There are several factors that could be motivating the government to investigate cable company practices now. For one, it is reviewing a $3.8 billion proposal by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other companies to transfer some spectrum to Verizon Wireless. The Justice Department’s scrutiny of that arrangement is certain to include an examination of video content delivered over wired and wireless networks.
Separately, the government is also monitoring Comcast’s takeover of NBCUniversal, which took place last year after a lengthy review by regulators.
In a consent decree with the Justice Department when the acquisition took place, Comcast committed to not “unreasonably discriminate” in relation to the Web traffic of its users. As part of a follow-up, the government is studying whether Comcast is living up to its commitments, according to one of the people with knowledge of the investigation.
For years, Comcast has enforced a cap of 250 gigabytes a month for its customers as part of what it calls reasonable network management. But Comcast has exempted the use of Xfinity, Comcast’s own online video Web site, saying that use would not count against that cap. Comcast says Xfinity videos are delivered over the company’s own network, not over the public Internet, but Netflix has cried foul.Last month, Comcast raised the data cap and said it would no longer enforce the limit as it explores new pricing plans based on usage.
The situation is clear, in some ways.
First, it is certainly in the public interest for cable companies to not throttle data going through their pipes. Since the companies are providing the now-essential Internet connection to the great majority of the connected population, they should not be able to step in and decide what sort of content gets what proportion of the bandwidth.
Second, it is difficult to see what public interest is served by a coercive bundling of channels, forcing the public to buy more than they want in order to get access to TV programming they want. And there is no recourse, in most cases, to much of this programming, other than piracy, which the media world holds up as a boogieman.
For these reasons, the Justice Department should require MVPD’s to drop any throttling of bandwidth based on content (also called Net Neutrality), which is the current policy of the FCC. And they should break the monopolistic practice of coercively bundling channels, so that any channel can be accessed through a fair price, and that individual shows — like a specific basketball game, or a specific movie on HBO — can be purchased in a pay-per-view style.
Whether the Justice Department will go that far — which would make the public happy, but not the TV magnates — remains to be seen.
