[opendtv] Re: NAB, MSTV applaud FCC must-carry proposal for DTV transition

At 5:47 PM -0400 7/21/07, Albert Manfredi wrote:

Dale Kelly wrote:


Looks as if Cable will use this issue to again challenge Must Carry
in the courts - no surprise.


http://ct.pbinews.com/rd/cts?d=244-13186-50-28505-78895-689112-0-0-0-1

The NCTA is being so disingenuous.
Every industry that relies on the government to enable monopoly or oligopoly control of a huge consumer market via regulation, will go to the mat to protect the historic perks they have enjoyed. We don't expect to hear the truth from politicians, or for them to fulfill campaign promises; and we don't expect monopolists to be honest in their arguments with the politicians or the public.
I would note, as Dale is suggesting, that the cable industry uses regulation to protect it's empire, even as the Lords of the neighboring Broadcast empire use regulation to tap into cable's cash flow.
The cable industry nearly won the last time they challenged must carry, and something like this could provide the needed "overreach" of the regulators to form the basis of a case for a new challenge.
My position all along has been that the broadcasters should only insist on must-carry of the digital signal. Let the cable companies decide whether to offer an analog tier or D/A STBs for their analog subscribers. And trust that the analog set subscribers will take matters into their own hands if the cable companies don't provide them a usable signal one way or the other.
This sounds more like the cable industry position. I am confused why Bert thinks the NCTA is being disingenuous, when he supports their position?
It also wouldn't have hurt the cable companies to support, rather than discourage, the use of CableCards. That would have allowed consumers to transition more quickly, without having to rely on new STBs from cable companies, thereby alleviating the problem of legacy analog users. It would also have satisfied the many analog cable customers who refuse to go digital mostly because they hate to have to use the cable company STBs. 

And while we're at it, let's open up the wireless telephone networks too.
Sadly, what is really disingenuous is the efforts of one of these monopolists to point fingers at the other in public, while they work together with the politicians behind the scene to reach ever deeper into our pockets.
If cable companies thought it was to their advantage to slow down the transition of their subscribers, well then, eventually this was bound to happen. It was painfully obvious and predictable. How can anyone feel they are being wronged?
Cable is only trying to slow down the transition to an open market for STB devices that can attach to their networks. In this they have been strongly supported by "in-house" suppliers like Motorola and Scientific Atlanta.
It is in their interest to move subscribers to digital, as they make more money from that subscriber, via a STB and service fees.
But it is also in their interest to maintain the analog tier because of legacy regulations that put a cable ready tuner in every TV sold with an NTSC tuner. They control the network to which MOST legacy analog sets are attached, rather than an off-air antenna.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Cable industry is "conflicted," rather than disingenuous. 

Regards
Craig


----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org 
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts: