March 16, 2007
Legislature 2007: Video franchise
Continuing our coverage of issues being discussed in the 2007 Florida legislature, let’s discuss the issue of a statewide video franchise.
As I write this, I’m watching the House Policy & Budget Council debate HB 529, “Statewide Cable Television and Video Service Franchises.” A similar effort failed in last year’s legislature, and in Congress.
I’ll go for a very brief summary of this issue: like the others, it’s nuanced, but I don’t know as much about this one off the top of my head.
Basically, the bill moves cable franchises from local governments to the state. In other words, if you want to run the cable network in a community, today you have to get approval from the municipality; under this bill, you would get approval from the state. The push for this comes from the telephone companies, who want to get into the video business, but don’t want to have to fight their way through hundreds of local communities — it’s much easier to need only 50 approvals.
The argument goes that, by reducing the transaction cost of getting a franchise (and some have gone so far as to call local governments’ requirements “extortion”), you make it easier for the phone companies to compete, which in turn brings down the cost to consumers.
The counter-argument is that local governments are best able to provide for their residents and will be more likely to go to bat for their area than some state board that will likely get cozy with the industry. Specifically, local governments are known for attaching conditions to their franchises, notably buildout (requiring the companies to offer service in areas they would otherwise not go because they don’t expect to make enough of a profit) and public/educational/governmental channels, or PEG. In Alachua County, this is the channel that carries the county and city commission meetings, the Florida Channel, etc. Other municipalities may require a public access channel (think Wayne’s World); there was a movement to require public access in Alachua County, but interest in following through appears to have waned.
Most of the debate appears to be focused on whether the bill provides enough of these consumer protections under the new system. I won’t get into it more than that at this time.
So why do we care about cable TV? Well, we don’t really, per se. What makes this interesting is that the cable and phone companies also provide Internet access. That means that “buildout” is about broadband access and competition, as well TV. It also brings Net neutrality into the debate.
So what, if anything, will pass? I’d peg the odds at even on something passing this session: it might happen, it might not. On the one hand, the phone companies have their friends in the legislature, and there are those legislators that mistrust local governments and are willing to throw them under the bus. On the other hand, the cable companies don’t like this, consumer advocates don’t like it, and there are legislators that prefer decentralized authority on this issue. If anything passes, I think there’s a fair chance it may be language that’s more friendly to the cable companies or consumer groups, or both. My guess is that stricter buildout or PEG requirements might happen, but any kind of Net neutrality condition would not.
I’ll post some more links and analysis on this when I get a chance.
[…] March 16 edition of Capital Report has a story about the cable franchise issue I wrote about earlier this week. The story starts about 1 minute into the […]
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS “PROTECT THE INCUMBANT’S INVESTMENT”
“By managing the deployment as we do, we protect the incumbent’s investment in existing infrastructure, we protect the public from unnecessary disruption to private business and to their safe use and enjoyment of the public right-of-way, and we ensure that new entrants are provided with unfettered access in a reasonable and timely fashion, while ensuring that they comply with all safety requirements. This system has worked well for cable, traditional phone and other providers for many years, and is necessarily performed by the local government.”
– Arvada Colorado Mayor Ken Fellman’s Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet Wednesday, April 27, 2005 (Fellman is also a cable franchise lawyer and VP at NATOA)
“PROTECT THE INCUMBANT’S INVESTMENT”, YOU BET THEY DO, SO WELL THAT YOUR CABLE BILL SHOT UP 93% INCREASE (1995-2005 FCC source)
WHY DO THEY JUST JACK UP THE TV BILL
Comcast is raising the price of the average metro-area customer’s cable bill by 6.9 percent starting March 1, yet they held the line on prices for high-speed Internet and phone services. – RMNews January 2007
THEY “PROTECT THE INCUMBENT’S INVESTMENT”, THAT MEANS NO COMPETITION. RESULT FOR YOU IS A 93% INCREASE IN YOUR CABLE BILL.
Comcast Profit Triples - Reuters, 2/1/07
How’s that for a double whammy – one week after Comcast announces a 7% increase for its captive cable customers, the cable monopoly announced record profits.
And as they rake in the cash and their executives get richer and richer, they fight every effort by their employees to get fair wages and benefits – all the while milking customers for everything they got!
As American Rights At Work found in a special report, wages for Comcast’s cable techs are a third lower than wages in traditional land-line telephone companies like at&t, where unions represent about three-fourths of the workers. Benefits are less generous and jobs are less secure, with annual turnover about twice as high.
Worse, Comcast fights tooth-and-nail to keep unions out, or decertify them once their in. Northwest Labor Press reports of a 37-page Comcast anti-union management training document that stated: “Comcast does not feel union representation is in the best interest of its employees, customers and shareholders.”
But it gets worse. Comcast is waging war against union employees – literally. During the AT&T days, unions made headway organizing in a handful of cities, including Beaverton, OR. But once Comcast acquired AT&T’s cable systems they began to systematically dismantle union shops…and show union workers the door. In Beaverton, Comcast vice president Curt Henninger made the company’s intentions crystal clear when he told commissioners in videotaped testimony: “I will tell you we are going to wage a war to decertify the CWA.”
Cable is anti-consumer & anti-competition
Legislators must send them the message that their days of pillaging customers and exploiting workers are over.
[…] previously wrote about the video franchise legislation considered in this year’s session in Tallahassee. Well, the bill passed, with provisions that weren’t good, so now public interest groups are […]