[opendtv] Re: Commissioner Copps on Internet openness
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 07:20:45 -0500
At 3:13 PM -0600 11/18/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
Sorry, Craig, but that just doesn't sound credible to me. First of
all, because the broadcasters you are talking about only accound for
a small handful of cable channels. The combined "retrans consent"
and "must carry" amount to a tiny percentage of 6 MHz channels
available to cable networks. Not only that, but in the digital age,
since the multicasts aren't mandatory, and since cable can use
256-QAM, the number of 6 MHz channels filled by these broadcasters
is AT MOST half as much as before, if all of the multicasts are also
carried, and potentially quite a bit less than that.
Credibility is not an issue here Bert. It is a factual analysis of
what happened. Broadcasters started pushing for compensation from
cable in the early '80s. They were successful in 1992 in getting the
Cable Bill passed, which gave then retrans consent. All of the
networks other than CBS used this first to launch new cable channels
with preferred placement. ABC Family, FX, and others. Then they
started buying up cable networks. The rest is history.
The other reason I find this blame to congloms non-credible is that
people who raced after the cable truck, gesticulating wildly and
with their eyes bugging out of their heads, were NEVER after the
programs that covered "local topics," like PTA or Chamber of
Commerce meetings. They were almost universally salivating for
sports, for movie channels, perhaps for CNN and the like. In other
words, what these street athletes craved was national programming.
So that's what the MVPDs offered.
Give it a break Bert. Yes customers flocked to cable because that's
where the good content and choice could be found.
Didn't Jesus Christ supposedly say that hypocrisy was the worst of
sins? I do believe that this FCC is in the pockets of the MVPDs. In
spite of the pretense. I'm sorry, but when they say that less than
10 percent of households is using FOTA TV these days, I flat do not
believe them. It just sounds like the sort of self-serving fiction
they need to repeat over and over, simply to forward their activist
agenda.
At least we mostly agree on this. The percentage of homes using FOTA
is open for debate.
Regards
Craig
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