The Center for Creative Voices in Media filed with the FCC our 65 page report, Cable’s “Level Playing Field” – Not Level. No Field. Recounting the real-life experiences and observations of top players in the cable business, including some of the pioneers who created the cable industry such as Leo Hindery, John Malone, Ted Turner, and Barry Diller, this report documents that:
There is no “level playing field" in America’s cable industry today. New independent cable channels such as Current and The America Channel get little or no carriage on Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the nation’s two largest cable operators, while the little-watched channels owned by those companies, such as G4, get widespread carriage. The situation is so dire that Al Gore, the Chairman of Current, recently led a rally of 7,000 Current fans outside Comcast’s Philadelphia headquarters to urge that the nation’s largest cable operator carry Current more widely.
Cable industry founders and pioneers such as Leo Hindery, Ted Turner, and Barry Diller – some of the most prominent and successful entrepreneurs in not just America’s cable industry, but all of American business – now call upon the government to step in to create the “level playing field” Congress intended and the law requires.
Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, has publicly embarked on a corporate strategy to control to the greatest extent possible the content that it distributes through its cable, whether via cable television or the broadband Internet – a strategy that is diametrically opposed to laws and regulations requiring a “level playing field.” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts went even farther in a private meeting of venture capitalists, revealing that while Comcast had once allowed and encouraged independent entrepreneurs to create new channels and services, such as CNN, it would “not let that happen again.” As the nation’s largest providers of broadband access to the Internet, Comcast and other large cable operators also intend to discriminate against independent content on the Internet and provide their often captive broadband users with a “closed” proprietary Internet in which the companies, not the users themselves, control the sites the user can visit and the applications he/she can use.
Creative Voices calls upon the FCC to fulfill its statutory duty to establish and protect “level playing fields” in cable and on the Internet, via a combination of meaningful ownership limits and enforceable rules. In terms of cable, ownership limits must ensure that no one or two companies hold life or death power over the fate of cable networks and that independent networks have an equal opportunity for carriage. Enforceable rules must provide for non-discrimination in the way programming services are treated by cable MSOs.
In terms of the Internet, Net Neutrality – giving the user the freedom to choose the websites and applications he/she wishes, provided they are lawful and do not harm the network -- must become more than an FCC policy goal; it must become an enforceable right.
We also call upon the Commission to not approve the takeover of Adelphia by Comcast and Time Warner Cable without imposing substantial and meaningful conditions that will also establish the “level playing field” that Congress intended and the law requires.
Ultimately, the power to determine what content consumers receive, whether it is delivered via cable TV or over the broadband Internet, must be much more in the hands of consumers themselves. They must have the freedom to access without regard to its ownership what content they wish to receive.
CABLE'S "LEVEL PLAYING FIELD" -- NOT LEVEL. NO FIELD.
