THE NCTA is staunchly defending the TV Everywhere initiative after the advocacy group Free Press described it as “agreements among giant media companies to stifle competition in the emerging market for online television programming”.
Free Press plus six other U.S. consumer advocacy groups have also called on federal antitrust authorities and Congress to investigate.
TV Everywhere, first announced last June by Time Warner and Comcast, is designed to offer television content on-line in a free, on-demand platform to consumers who subscribe to a multichannel video programming service provided by cable, satellite or a telephone company. Comcast became the first company to launch its TV Everywhere product, under the brand name Fancast Xfinity, in mid- December, and other BDUs have confirmed that they have similar plans in the works.
In its report entitled TV Competition Nowhere: How The Cable Industry Is Colluding To Kill Online TV , Free Press maintains that while being marketed as a consumer-friendly feature, TV Everywhere is in fact “designed to eliminate the threat of online competition, limit consumer choice, and build on the cable TV model that gouges consumers”.
The accusations generated a rather terse blog post from NCTA president and CEO Kyle McSlarrow, who called Free Press’s depiction of TV Everywhere “a reminder of the admonition that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts”.
“Free Press’ theory seems to be that TV Everywhere poses a threat “to kill” online video competition because it would only be available to cable and other pay TV subscribers”, McSlarrow wrote. “But they get it exactly backwards: it is an effort to ensure more content than ever is distributed over the Internet at no extra charge to consumers”.
In the press release announcing the Free Press report, its author Marvin Ammori, a law professor at the University of Nebraska and a senior adviser to the group, called TV Everywhere “a textbook antitrust violation.”
"The old media giants are working together to kill off innovative online competitors and carve up the market for themselves”, Ammori said in the release. “TV Everywhere is designed to eliminate competition at a pivotal moment in the history of television. The antitrust authorities should not stand by and let the cable cartel crush Internet TV before it gets off the ground."
McSlarrow responded to that allegation by noting that “antitrust laws do not prohibit, but encourage collaboration, even among competitors, that lead to innovation and new products and services for consumers”.
“The fact that market participants are experimenting with models in addition to fee or advertiser-supported models is not a sign of anti-competitive conduct”, his post continued. “It is a sign of a dynamic and rapidly-changing market in which no one knows the ultimate outcome. Free Press may prefer one video distribution model over another. But that is for the marketplace – and content owners exercising their rights to distribute their content in the manner they choose – to sort out. A model that would give consumers the option to get more value – by access to online content – as part of the TV subscription they already pay for is something that consumers should have the right to embrace or reject.”
– Lesley Hunter
