FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is in trouble with Congressional Republicans for his plan to leverage a little-known statutory provision to impose regulations on the cable industry. Earlier today, 23 members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to the FCC saying that a regulatory crackdown on cable "is unsupported by the record of significant competition in the video programming marketplace and would be harmful to innovation and consumers."
This public spanking follows by one day the open chastisement of Martin by fellow Republican commissioner Robert McDowell. As I spelled out in my post yesterday, everybody is upset with Martin, not necessarily solely for his seeming fixation on punishing cable, but more for his blatant torture of data to justify the new set of regulations.
A new twist that I didn't go into yesterday is how the NFL Network is pushing Martin's buttons on this matter. Cable operators are notoriously hardball negotiators with their cable and tech suppliers. As a consequence, the NFL Network is looking to buy its way onto cable systems to bypass the stubborn bunch by leasing capacity on cable systems instead.
But, the leased access fees that cable operators are demanding are still too high for the sports network. The NFL is therefore looking for lower leased access rates and is working hard to change the groundrules that drive how leased access rates are calculated.
It is the law governing leased access that Martin is invoking to justify a new set of rules (which include, supposedly, not only new leased access requirements but also new ownership requirements). That law says that the FCC can enact rules needed to promote "diversity of information sources" if cable television is available to at least 70% of American households and at least 70% of those households actually subscribe to a cable service.
Even though cable is nowhere near that threshold, Martin relies on bad data to say the industry does indeed pass this 70/70 threshold. That's where the embarassment begins, DC-style.
It's routine to stretch the truth, spin, argue and manipulate data in Washington. But it's always a bad idea to (let's face it) make up data, particularly if you're the head of an independent regulatory agency that has access to endless sources of good information and particularly if you can be easily proven wrong. It's even worse if you're trying to make up stuff to justify an initiative that is out of step with your party's own program.
Yeah, if there were any doubts yesterday about whether this whole new Martin-instigated cable regulatory stuff would ever see the light of day, those doubts have been put to rest today.
Update: Well, I'm wrong it seems. Multichannel News' Ted Hearn has this article posted tonight that claims Martin is moving ahead anyway with an ambitious agenda for the FCC's November 27 meeting that proposes all kinds of new leased access obligations on the cable industry. The AP's John Dunbar, however, notes that Martin has a track record of pulling agenda items at the last minute if he doesn't have support.
Cynthia Brumfield at 7:07 PM|Comments(0)
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