Comcast-NBCU Unlikely to Change NCTA Stance on Carriage Rules
The cable industry’s stance that rules governing deals between broadcasters and cable operators don’t work is unlikely to change because Comcast is buying control of NBC Universal, NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow told an industry luncheon Wednesday. Retransmission consent continues to be an area of interest for the group and that’s unlikely to change even though NCTA member Comcast is buying broadcast-TV network NBC, he indicated. That doesn’t mean there won’t be further disputes over pay-TV carriage of stations, he said at the Media Institute.
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Retransmission consent is “a actually very highly regulatory regime that ought to be reformed,” a position that the NCTA has taken before, McSlarrow said in a question-and- answer session. “We've had various flashpoints on this and I think we have some more coming.” His prepared remarks focused on how net neutrality rules threaten free speech.
It’s too soon to say what position the trade group will have on spectrum repurposing because the FCC hasn’t laid out concrete proposals, McSlarrow responded to another question. “The hypothetical keeps changing,” he said: “I've seen nothing yet that seems real enough to circle the wagons” of members and come up with a position.” He said “at least some broadcasters” have held conversations with commission staffers about using less spectrum so more can be set aside for wireless broadband.
The First Amendment is being misappropriated by proponents of net neutrality regulation who use it to argue that rules are needed so speech won’t be suppressed, McSlarrow said. That argument turns what he believes are the underpinnings of the amendment on its head. It’s “fascinating and frankly disturbing” that in recent years “First Amendment principles have been turned upside down in an attempt to advance agendas that themselves threaten true First Amendment rights,” McSlarrow said in his speech. “Urging the government to impose rules that supposedly promote First Amendment values is too often used to justify regulations that instead threaten First Amendment rights.”
Net neutrality rules also could infringe First Amendment rights because they could prevent providers from delivering their traditional multichannel video programming services or new services that are separate and distinct from Internet service,” he said. The FCC’s recent rulemaking notice discussed exempting managed or specialized services from new rules while strongly implying “some kind of guaranteed amount of bandwidth capacity for services the government deems important,” McSlarrow added. “The bandwidth we're talking about is capacity on private transmission facilities constructed by ISPs.” That also raises Fifth Amendment concerns, he said.
The free speech of both ISP and Web content providers could be threatened by net neutrality rules, McSlarrow said in the Q&A. Whether a non-discrimination mandate could be designed to not impinge on free speech depends on how it’s developed and how various terms are defined, because “there’s a continuum,” he said. “It’s not like you can just come up with a single silver bullet.” Asked for ideas on how to craft acceptable rules, McSlarrow responded, “I'm not going to negotiate with myself in public.”
High-quality online video such as that from TV Everywhere needs “a sustainable business model to keep this content coming,” and regulation could make it financially impossible to add more programming, McSlarrow said. “We're in the very early stages of figuring all this out” since content won’t just “magically appear” on its own, he said. “The idea that people need to freeze it in place” and say what works and doesn’t is impractical, he said. “We have no idea how this is going to unfold.”