New Year's Blackouts Highlight Need for Retrans Reform, ATVA Says
Despite Chairman Tom Wheeler's decision last summer not to revisit the FCC's totality of circumstances test (see 1607140047), retransmission consent reform is needed, the American TV Alliance said in a filing Monday in docket 15-216. ATVA said the proof lies…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
in the stations that were blacked out in numerous markets on New Year's Day (see 1701030046), affecting 4 million pay-TV-subscribing households. ATVA said the surge in blackouts, involving numerous broadcasters and multiple multichannel video programming distributors, demonstrates the breadth of the problem, and in many cases, they happened despite the MVPD offering to continue negotiating, often with retroactive "true-ups" of rates. In a statement, NAB said ATVA's data -- which it called "often questionable" -- shows programming impasses declined by nearly 50 percent in 2016. "We hope that trend continues now that the FCC has decided not to favor pay TV in this free market negotiation process," NAB said, saying most of the remaining impasses "involve massive pay TV companies muscling very small broadcast stations/family owned TV stations." In a blog post Monday, TV Freedom pointed to Dish Network as being involved in a significant number of carriage disruptions and accused the pay-TV industry of "hardball strategy that goes like this: Forget the impact on viewers. Just force enough programming 'blackouts' to get Congress and/or the FCC involved." It also said broadcast signals are never fully blacked out since they're available over the air and on other pay-TV platforms -- though that industry makes switching providers difficult through early termination fees. Dish didn't comment.