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09/15/2016
Wheeler puts pay-TV back on defense with revised set-top proposal
To borrow hack football analogies — hey, the season just started! — the pay-TV industry was about to kill the clock on the FCC’s quest to regulate set-tops, but agency Chairman Tom Wheeler just forced a fumble.
Now, with the introduction of Wheeler’s revised app-based set-top regulation proposal last week, the industry and its programming allies are back on defense, making statements, and filing comments and ex partes, trying to explain why a revised regulatory plan underpinned by their core idea — to base it on multiscreen apps — shouldn’t move forward.
“While we appreciate that Chairman Wheeler has abandoned his discredited proposal to break apart cable and satellite services, his latest tortured approach is equally flawed,” said Comcast VP of Government Communication Sena Fitzmaurice in a statement last week.
“Enabling consumers to use apps instead of set-top boxes may be a valid goal, but the marketplace is already delivering on the goal without overreaching government intervention. The FCC’s mandate threatens to bog down with regulations and bureaucracy the entire TV app market that consumers are increasingly looking to for innovation, choice and competition,” added Charter.
