Streamers Create Advocacy Group Fronted by Clyburn, Upton
Large streaming services including Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock and Disney formed an advocacy group, with former FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and former House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., as senior advisers, said a release Tuesday from the new Streaming Innovation…
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Alliance. SIA also includes Max, TelevisaUnivision, VaultAccess and the For Us By Us Network. The Motion Picture Association “played a leading role” in organizing the group, the release said. The creation of the SIA appears to be a response to a push from broadcasters to reclassify streaming services as MVPDs that would fall under the FCC’s retransmission consent regime; network affiliate groups spun up their own advocacy entity, the Coalition for Local News, earlier this summer. Networks and YouTube also started an advocacy group focused on the matter (see 2308310064). “The rise of innovative, new video streaming services is an American success story we should celebrate and encourage, not smother with obsolete and ill-fitting rules and regulations designed for completely different technology, products, and business models,” said Upton in the release. “Streaming services have opened up a new era of progress for program diversity that is bringing relevant stories and options to historically underserved communities at a record pace while opening doors for production jobs to people of color that have been shut for decades,” said Clyburn in the release. “Any policy that drags down streaming would turn back the clock on this vital progress as well.” As a first step, broadcasters pushed the FCC to refresh the record in docket 14-261, the proceeding in which reclassification was considered in 2014. Clyburn was an FCC commissioner then and voted in favor of an NPRM seeking comment on reclassifying over-the-top services as MVPDs, which she called “prescient.” “Our goals should be to define ‘multichannel video programming distributor’ as broadly as possible to accommodate a new set of choices and offerings for consumers,” Clyburn wrote then. “We also want to ensure that nascent, internet-based services are not given competitive advantages over established MVPDs, who have well-defined obligations under the law.” SIA released a poll Tuesday, conducted by FGS Global, finding most voters surveyed viewed streaming services favorably and expressed concern that new regulations “could require streaming services to collect more data or deter them from offering sensitive programming,” the release said. NAB and the Coalition for Local News didn’t comment.