PEG Commitment In Comcast/TWC Public Interest Statement Called Into Question
Advocates for public, educational and governmental access channels bemoaned what they view as a scarce mention of a commitment to providing access to PEG channels in Comcast’s proposal last week to the FCC to buy Time Warner Cable for about $45 billion. Offering PEG channels in HD and through VOD are some of the options that Comcast should commit to offering subscribers, said PEG officials. Comcast’s FCC filing laid out the benefits to consumers it plans if the transaction is approved (CD April 9 p5). Some have said Comcast does more for PEG than other cable operators, in part because of conditions it agreed to in 2011 to win FCC approval to buy control of NBCUniversal.
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The commitment should be much bigger, said Michael Bradley, a Bradley Hagen attorney who represents local governments on cable franchising matters and PEG organizations. In addition to carrying PEG channels in HD and standard definition, Comcast should voluntarily agree to fund PEG with a 3 percent gross revenue fee to be used for operational and capital support, “to ensure that we have good robust PEG cable programming throughout the country, [and] not just in pockets,” he said. Including the PEG programming lineups in the electronic programming guides is important, “because more and more subscribers are using the online apps to view programming information and then choosing programming from that particular application,” he said. Channels should be easy for subscribers to find, he added.
The benefits in the Comcast public interest statement “weren’t about PEG per se, but they were about any content that their platform can deliver to devices in the home,” said Mike Wassenaar, public policy advocate at Alliance for Community Media. “There were very few references to that commitment to local content.” ACM hasn’t taken a position on the deal, but the group is skeptical, he said.
With this large of a purchase, there’s all the more reason for Comcast to acknowledge a public interest obligation, said Bunnie Riedel, American Community Television executive director. She said she was disappointed that PEG was mentioned “in passing.” Before there was a Comcast, there was PEG, she said. Most PEG content makers are producing their content in HD, she said. “There’s no statement about moving us to the digital platform or providing us with HD channels,” she said. “There should be all the things that they know that are vexing PEG people right now,” including listing PEG channels in the channel guide, she added.
Comcast will extend PEG conditions from the NBCUniversal transaction to Time Warner Cable systems if the TWC deal is approved, a Comcast spokeswoman told us. Comcast’s X1 platform allows customers to stream nearly the company’s entire channel lineup, including must-carry and PEG channels, to computers, smartphones and tablets in the home, she said.
The FCC NBCUniversal deal conditions included a pilot project that tested other options for providing PEG channels, like expanding programming through online and video platforms (CD Feb 3 p17). “Project Open Voice demonstrated that they certainly can do it,” Riedel said. But the project “has nothing to do with the basics of what we do,” like creating PEG content and serving the community, she said. Comcast also should commit to furthering FCC universal service and public interest goals by bringing service to rural areas, Bradley said. “If Comcast and Time Warner [Cable] can pay tens of millions of dollars in golden parachute payouts, it seems they could definitely set aside at least that much money to bring service to rural and tribal areas.” Golden parachutes are payments some departing executives get following mergers. He commended the Comcast/NBCUniversal effort to provide discounted Internet service to economically disadvantaged families with children. The company could expand that service to all economically disadvantaged people, he said.
The PEG advocates will work to ensure that the interests of PEG remain on the FCC’s radar during the review of Comcast/Time Warner Cable, they said. There’s an opportunity for the FCC to go to the Justice Department to work with Comcast and make sure that there are real public interest commitments made, Bradley said. The commission is hearing about the PEG interests more and more, he said. “It seems that in the last year they've become more interested in public interest issues and I think PEG is one of those important public interest issues."
The atmosphere during the Comcast/NBCUniversal review was different for PEG, Riedel said. “I don’t think we had as good of a profile as we probably would have liked.” That deal was purely about content, but this time it’s about public right of way and the public space, she said. “We're going to make sure the FCC has PEG on its radar.”
ACM plans to have a dialogue with its members, Comcast and the FCC on ways to help PEG and local media thrive, ACM’s Wassenaar said. “We hope to have conversations with the commission.” The commission has talked about the value of local programming to meet the information needs of all Americans, he said: “PEG fits that role.”