TWC Rebuts Google’s Program Access Claims, Pointing up Bigger IP/MVPD Issues
Time Warner Cable responded to Google’s gripes that the operator is withholding a regional sports network (RSN) in the Kansas City, Mo., area, where the Internet company sells a nascent video and super-fast broadband product. The dispute points up bigger issues over program access in an Internet Protocol context, said FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and an Internet lawyer not part of the spat over access to Time Warner Cable’s Metro Sports Kansas City RSN. Time Warner Cable’s new response to the Internet company’s criticisms made in recent months in FCC filings -- and most recently in a program access proceeding -- was the operator’s first rebuttal, a cable industry lawyer said.
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Google used the dispute over the channel to contend cable operators wrongly say program access rules aren’t needed. That the company can’t get a deal to carry Metro Sports to subscribers to its Google Fiber service “confirms the Commission’s understanding of lingering market conditions” in the rulemaking notice, which sought comment on a proposal making it harder for operators to withhold their RSNs by setting up a rebuttable presumption against it (CD Jan 16 p7), the Internet company said last month (http://xrl.us/bofgax). “TWC’s conduct with regard to Metro Sports highlights the continuing necessity for strong, enforceable program access protections for new entrants."
No so, countered Time Warner Cable in a Tuesday filing in the docket on the further rulemaking on program access, 12-68 (http://xrl.us/bofga3). The operator doesn’t let any rivals carry Metro Sports, which “exists to differentiate TWC’s cable service from competitors’ video services and is a key component of TWC’s local editorial strategy,” the filing said. To “avoid any allegation that it was acting contrary to the letter or spirit” of program access rules, the operator said it offered to let Google carry Division I college sports on the channel, an offer which it said wasn’t accepted. “TWC’s rights to produce and air telecasts of high school sporting events are non-exclusive; accordingly, Google is free to create and distribute its own telecasts of such events.” Spokeswomen for both companies declined to comment for this story.
That Google appears to prefer to “piggyback” on the operator’s programming investments doesn’t “remotely” make them “anticompetitive or otherwise unreasonable,” Time Warner Cable said. “The forced sharing of such content ... would harm competition and consumers.” Google would like to have “any desirable programming” available to every rival distributor, the operator continued. Disney’s ABC, CBS, News Corp.’s Fox, Comcast’s NBC and Time Warner Inc.’s HBO would, under that approach, “be required to share the same content rather than develop their own unique offerings,” the operator said. “But that approach obviously would undercut diversity, innovation, and other important public benefits."
Pai thinks the discord between the two companies in Kansas City “demonstrates that this is a rapidly evolving market in an IP context,” he told us. “It might not make ... sense to apply the same” rules on incumbent operators like Time Warner Cable face when Google “puts the infrastructure in place” to develop a new video network, as it’s done in Pai’s home state of Kansas, he said. “Companies like Google, AT&T and Verizon are now finding what companies like Charter” Communications and other cable operators are finding that Title VI video service law “is pretty difficult,” he said. Pai also Thursday made a pitch for any Cable Act update to allow the agency to forbear from cable regulation. (See separate report in this issue.)
The ongoing transition to IP video comes amid “fierce” multichannel video programming distributor competition, Pai said at the Media Institute luncheon in Washington Thursday. “It’s not clear how the economics will shake out. But we do know that over-the-top providers like Netflix and Hulu have encouraged some consumers to drop cable service and set their own schedule for television viewing.” Mentioning Netflix’s 27 million online customers that exceed that of any MVPD, and Hulu’s 3-million subscribers, he said “nobody should underestimate these Internet providers just because they are new.” Pai also cited Amazon Instant Video and Apple’s iTunes and Internet-connected devices from Microsoft, Roku and TiVo Premiere.