Broadcasters Well Positioned to Compete with Proliferation of Content Platforms, Says NAB’s Smith
The broadcasting industry remains relevant as the public’s viewing habits change, NAB President Gordon Smith said on C-SPAN’s The Communicators in an interview scheduled to air this weekend. In spite of the challenges facing the industry, like spectrum availability, the changing mobile landscape and the broadcasting regulatory burden, broadcasting has a bright future, he said. TV remains highly relevant to the future, “because when you look at the top hundred programs that are watched, 90 of them are broadcast content,” Smith said. “We remain highly relevant because, what we do, it is local,” and it’s free, he said.
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Broadcasters are challenged by efforts to go mobile, Smith said. “The challenge for us is we want to be on every device for every person at every hour of the day,” and “we're a mobile society, so the challenge is to make sure we're on [tablets], computers, phones as well as the traditional viewing,” he said.
Smith said this year’s law for the FCC to auction TV stations’ spectrum protects broadcasters. The way the incentive auction would be designed hasn’t been done before, he said. “None of the big networks are going to be volunteering to go out of business.” NAB will focus on ensuring that entities that remain in the business will be held harmless, he said. “We believe the legislation that Congress passed does have those kinds of protections.”
The way the broadcast industry uses its spectrum helps it prevail over other forms of content delivery, such as over-the-top, Smith said. “Spectrum is a finite resource and others want that resource, and yet there is not enough spectrum in the universe to do all video by broadband.” The broadcasting industry has a platform that uses a “one-to-everyone in a location” model, versus Hulu, Netflix and other services, that have a “one-to-one” model, he said: “Their system will always fail because of the congestion of transmitting video one-to-one. You can’t do that."
Broadcasters are in a highly regulated industry, Smith said. “When you compare the regulatory burden that broadcasters have versus cable or satellite or … the Internet … we're the regulated one,” he said. “We earn our licenses every day by all that we offer, and the public obligations as to decency, children’s content, public affairs … things that the public is able to take for granted, but upon which they are very reliant.” There are community standards in decency “that we have to observe,” he said. Smith said many NAB members think their First Amendment rights are somehow impinged, but it’s good public policy: “Broadcasters are not in the indecency business. That’s not our model and I think, ultimately, that serves the American people.”