Media Marketplace Policy Has ‘Failed’ Consumers, Says CFA’s Cooper
Lawmakers must realize that media marketplace policy has “failed” and is harming consumers, said Mark Cooper, research director at the Consumer Federation of America, in an interview Monday. The media marketplace is facing a “collaborative duopoly at best and a non-regulated monopoly at worst,” Cooper told us. “There is a very serious danger to consumers in this space.” Cooper added that if the proposed Verizon/SpectrumCo deal is approved, it will mark the “end of competition” in the media marketplace.
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Cooper plans to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee at its July 24 Cable Act hearing. Other witnesses planning to testify are: Melinda Witmer, executive vice president and chief video and content officer at Time Warner Cable; Colleen Abdoulah, CEO of WOW!; Martin Franks, CBS executive vice president-planning, policy and government affairs; NAB President Gordon Smith; and former Disney lobbyist Preston Padden, now a law professor at the University of Colorado.
Cooper said he plans to take a “broad view” approach to the issue in his testimony that asks how the policies of the 1990s worked and didn’t work in the subsequent decades. “We have to look carefully at what the 21st century looks like,” Cooper said. “Over-the-air broadcast is an important medium but it exists in a different context.”
Cooper said he plans to discuss how retransmission consent was “used and abused” by broadcasters and cable companies. “I believe that consumers have not faired well in the retransmission tango. … The conflicts between cable companies and broadcasters was always solved by reaching into consumers’ pockets.”
NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton told us that broadcasters sympathize with consumers. His comments came in a separate phone interview Monday. “The last thing we want is to have a signal disrupted. … We don’t like to see consumers being played as pawns by cable companies who are trying to inject Congress into free market negotiations. It just doesn’t pass the laugh test to have big cable companies to profess concern for consumers,” he said. Time Warner Cable declined to comment.
Cooper will urge lawmakers to create new rules for Web-based content distributors as a means to expand choice for consumers, he said. “I certainly think making sure broadband is allowed to play a role in the media space is important to promoting competition and protecting consumers,” he said.
Broadcasters would support legislation that incorporates new entrants like Netflix and Hulu “as long as there are copyright protections for the content providers,” said Wharton. But online video startup Aereo “is in a different ballgame than Netflix,” Wharton said. “Aereo is a copyright infringer despite what the judge found last week, [and] we are confident on appeal that Aereo will be found to be a copyright infringer.” But if distributors like Netflix have the “proper legal permission to carry broadcast programming we are perfectly fine with that,” he said. An Aereo spokeswoman said the company “fundamentally disagrees with Mr. Wharton’s characterization and the court’s decision validates the fact that Aereo’s technology does indeed work as we have described.”