Emily Steel; Mark Scott (September 17

Notably, the post says the FCC’s proposal "makes it easier for subscribers to control their own experience when accessing the programming that they… Second, as I’ve written, the FCC’s plans simply won’t work. It does nothing to improve the television market and simply makes more tech and media companies dependent on the FCC’s good graces for competitive survival. When programming can be easily repurposed, as the FCC would like, what is control cable that upends entire business models of hundreds of media companies and distributors. We are in what many media critics regard as the Golden Age of Television. A multi-media network has to support a broad range of bit-rates demanded by connections, not only because there are many communication media, but also because a communication medium may be encoded by algorithms with different bit-rates. They planned originally to offer only broadband but came to find out there was little market for a broadband-only provider.

Most people want TV packaged with broadband and Google was compelled by market forces to go out and purchase TV programming to attract customers. What the FCC is trying to do is force, say, Comcast’s TV programming to be available to certain application makers who want to retransmit that programming. And, despite what activists say, this isn’t about "cable" either but all TV distributors ("MVPDs") like satellite and telephone companies and Google Fiber, most of whom are small TV players. This latest plan has an even smaller chance of success because the FCC is not simply regulating cable boxes, but also boxes from satellite TV and IPTV distributors and their apps. This is bolstered by the fact that the rates cable companies charge are consistent with what their smaller phone and satellite competitors charge for STBs. TV distributors, including Netflix, purchase rights for sports and other programming to steal subscribers away from competitors. Copyright holders re-sell the same programming to different distributors, sometimes several times over.

Same programming, four different distribution technologies and five different companies. Quite simply, the FCC is coercing companies to make their contracted-for TV content available to others who didn’t contract for it. While the traditional studio business of financing content production has been cost-plus or break-even for years, the cable network business has more than doubled topline revenues since 2005 and expanded cash flow margins by 10% (375 net bps). "While Netflix will get more attention from adult series such as House of Cards and Arrested Development," Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos told USA Today in 2014, "the kids arena is incredibly strategic to us." In fact, this category is so important that it receives not only its own dedicated section and interface on Netflix, but an exemption from the company’s much-marketed binge release model. In fact, change via the courts is what Public Knowledge implicitly endorses. In fact, the STB monthly rates cable companies charge are pretty much identical to what is control cable, This Web page, municipal-owned and -operated TV stations charge. The FCC tried "opening up" cable boxes for years with CableCard.

That debacle resulted in ten years of regulations and FCC-directed standards and had only a marginal effect on the STB market. The FCC is telling these hundreds of companies using dozens of technologies, codecs, and standards to develop interoperable standards so that other companies can retransmit the TV programming the MVPDs have bundled. Even non-MVPDs like mobile carriers and tech companies, including Twitter, Yahoo, and Facebook, are using TV programming to compete and they are investing big into video programming. Even that "hook" is dubious-the FCC arbitrarily classifies apps and software as "navigation devices" but concludes that actual TV devices like Chromecast, Roku, smartphones, and tablets aren’t navigation devices. Even on fully electrified networks, it is usually a good idea to keep a few diesel locomotives for maintenance and repair trains, for instance to repair broken or stolen overhead lines, or to lay new tracks. Even competing STB companies like TiVo charge monthly fees. At conclusion, under 5% of the STB market went to "competitive" STB makers like TiVo. First, the entire push for the proposal is based on the baseless notion that "charging monthly STB fees reveals that cable companies are abusing their market power." I say baseless because cable companies have lost 14 million TV subscribers since 2002 to phone and satellite companies’ TV offerings (Verizon FiOS TV, Dish, Google Fiber, etc.), which suggests cable doesn’t have market power to charge anticompetitive prices.