Verizon and AT&T Ask FCC to Act on Their Program Access Complaints
Following the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s ruling earlier this month (CD June 12 p4) in Cablevision v. FCC upholding much of a 2010 program access order, AT&T and Verizon asked the commission to act quickly on their pending complaints over access to Madison Square Garden Network’s HD feeds. “In light of the court’s ruling in Cablevision, there are only two issues remaining in this proceeding,” counsel for AT&T wrote in a Monday letter. “Whether defendants have rebutted the presumption that their selective withholding of MSG HD and MSG+ HD has the purpose or effect of hindering competition; and … whether a ruling in favor of AT&T would violate the First Amendment in this case.” Those issues have been fully briefed and the commission should act soon to resolve the complaint, it said.
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Verizon also asked the commission to act quickly on its complaint over the same programming, in a June 15 letter to Media Bureau Chief William Lake. “There is no longer any possible reason for the Commission to delay resolving Verizon’s complaint,” Verizon Deputy General Counsel Michael Glover wrote. He noted Verizon filed its first complaint on the matter nearly two years ago and nine months have passed since the telco’s supplemental complaint was fully briefed. The intent of the letter is to get the FCC process back on track, a Verizon spokesman said.
Cablevision, whose owners also control the recently spun-off MSG Co., said the court’s decision also requires the FCC to define “unfair” conduct properly, in order to proceed. “We look forward to participating in the rulemaking process and we continue to believe that local and regional program exclusives can be pro-competitive, especially in markets like New York with as many as five video providers,” the cable operator said.
The FCC can act now, despite how the court came down on the definition of “unfair,” the Verizon letter said. The D.C. Circuit “recognized that the Commission remains free to ‘assess [the] fairness’ of a cable operator’s withholding of terrestrially delivered RSN programming `on a case-by-case basis,’ through individual adjudications such as this one,” the letter said. “Cablevision has used programming as a weapon to handicap direct competitors and to extend the legacy of its former monopoly franchises."
The D.C. Circuit’s decision “squarely rejected” several of Cablevision’s main arguments in the case, AT&T said about its complaint: “And there is no longer any reason for delay on the remaining issues.”