TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine Varney! (and Jon Lebowitz and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: June 24, 2009 2:47:32 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine  
Varney! (and Jon Lebowitz and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine Varney! (and Jon Lebowitz  
and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

By Harold Feld on June 24, 2009 - 2:10pm
<http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2494>
Time Warner and Comcast have announced a new pilot program for their  
TV Anywhere initiative. The 5,000 customers in the pilot will get  
access to cable programming content not otherwise available online —  
as long as they prove they subscribe to a subscription video service —  
or “MVPD” — like cable or FIOS. (MVPD stands for “multichannel video  
programming distributor” and means anything that sells you a whole  
bunch of cable channels. Forgive my jargon but it’s just an easier  
term to fling around for this.)

The supporters of this initiative (which the New York Times notes is  
also known in the industry by the more accurate but less friendly  
names as the “Authentication Program” and the “Entitlement Program”)  
point out that its just a bunch of broadband ISPs, who also happen to  
be MVPDs, coming together with the handful of other vertically  
integrated content companies like Viacom and DIRECTV/Liberty Media to  
create a common standard so that everyone who has already paid for  
this content can now also get it online. Ultimately, as long as you  
subscribe to any MVPD, you will get access to the programming through  
any internet provider. How could this possibly be anti-competitive?

Some of us old codgers with media regulatory backgrounds have long  
memories. For example, did you know that the FCC first authorized the  
direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service in 1982, and that we used to  
have something called “wireless cable?” Why didn’t DBS manage to get  
going until the mid-1990s and wireless cable died on the vine? Answer:  
Because cable operators used control over programming (either direct  
control by owning the programming outright or indirectly by  
threatening to kick off programmers who sold programming to potential  
competitors) to keep these services from emerging. In 1992, Congress  
created the program access rules and made it illegal for cable  
operators to demand exclusive deals from independent programmers. That  
allowed satellite companies (and overbuilders like RCN and telcos like  
AT&T) to get “must have” video programming to offer competing video  
subscription packages.

So while everyone and his brother is fixated about cable operators  
trying to keep customers from “cutting the chord,” and noting how this  
ties in with theefforts to impose metered pricing and capacity caps,  
the anticompetitive impact goes way, waaaayyy beyond locking  
subscribers into obscenely profitable video bundles. As I noted when I  
blogged on this a few months ago, it works to (a) prevent the  
emergence of “virtual cable” competitors such asNetflix, and (b)  
protect the current cable programming network business model (as  
explained by Mark Cuban). It also jeopardizes innovation and further  
fragments internet content, as demonstrated by the Hulu/Boxee.tv dust- 
up back in February.

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