FSF: The FCC Shouldn't Take Up Social Contract Proposal
The FCC shouldn’t take up a proposal to give broadcasters expedited waivers of media ownership rules in exchange for their promises to reduce retransmission consent rates by 50% over three years, said Free State Foundation Senior Fellow Andrew Long in…
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a post Monday. The proposal, from Cincinnati Bell Extended Territories and Hawaiian Telcom Services Co., was filed in the FCC’s “Delete” docket in June. It amounts to “forward-looking, government-imposed pricing mandates” on retransmission consent rates “that could persist for a decade or more,” Long wrote. The proposal would also use administrative contracts that couldn't be reviewed in court and would bind broadcasters and MVPDs, he said. “These so-called voluntary ‘social contracts’ would impose enforceable, multiyear pricing constraints -- effectively, rate regulation -- while circumventing judicial scrutiny.”