FCC Almost Fumbles Super Bowl in Boston

There is no doubt that the citizens of New England, and in particular Boston, are focused on the Patriots going to and winning the Super Bowl.  What they didn’t realize is that Washington, D.C., and the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) retransmission consent rules, almost stopped them from watching the Super Bowl.   According to a January 26, 2012 article in the Union Leader, “Villandry is among 200,000 DirecTV subscribers who may be blacked out from watching Super Bowl XLVI, the result of an ongoing dispute between the satellite provider and Sunbeam Television Corporation, which owns the NBC affiliate in Boston. A conflict over retransmission consent fees has prevented DirecTV customers in Greater Boston and New Hampshire from watching NBC since Jan. 14.”  Luckily, an agreement was reached to ensure that the game could be watched by those DirecTV subscribers.  The threatened blackout was a reminder of how Washington policies continue to hinder the free market from working.

How did Boston DirecTV customers get to the precipice of a blackout?  The Communications Act of 1934 was amended in 1992 to give broadcasters an advantage in negotiations with monopoly cable providers, granting broadcasters the right to choose between guaranteed carriage or insisting that multichannel video programming distributors (cable and satellite providers) obtain and pay for a station’s consent to retransmit the station to local subscribers.  Needless to say, the television landscape has changed drastically since 1992.  The fact is that there are no longer cable monopolies and broadcasters have a choice among many providers such as cable, satellite and fiber optic networks.  This has given broadcasters the upper hand in negotiations. Broadcasters have used this advantage to force cable and satellite providers to pay outrageous fees or carry extra channels on their basic tiers.  This lopsided leverage has caused program blackouts until a deal is reached (such as what is happening in Boston) and a huge increase in what customers pay as broadcasters’ pass these fees as higher rates to customers.

Luckily, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) have a plan.  H.R. 3675 and S. 2008, the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act of 2011, sponsored by Rep. Scalise and Sen. DeMint would repeal, among other things, must-carry and retransmission consent rules.  The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act will allow these negotiations to take place in a true free market by repealing the must- carry and the retransmission consent regimes that distorts negotiations. Broadcasters also stand to gain because the Act also does away with broadcast ownership caps and the compulsory copyright license in which the government sets the royalties that networks are paid for their content. Passage of the bill will be good news for consumers and the next city that gets held hostage by the FCC and broadcasters.

It is ludicrous to think that a  country that prides itself on technological advances would have a government created problem that would threaten the viewing of one  of the world’s most popular sporting events in a city that is participating in the event.