FCC Looking Into DirecTV Deal?
According to reports, the FCC is going to investigate the still-as-yet-unannounced DirecTV deal with MLB Extra Innings.
While I’m pleased that the government seems to be listening to people’s pleas and acting on them in a reasonable time frame, I have serious doubts as to what will come of this.
I can’t think of a way that the FCC can, or should, interject themselves into the negotiated deal between Major League Baseball and DirecTV. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as against the proposed move as much as anyone, but I don’t think that going through the FCC and John Kerry is a reasonable way to effect change.
Who we should really be pressuring to act is MLB itself. The FCC shouldn’t meddle in broadcast deals between private businesses and satellite content providers, no matter how much the result may stink for the fans.
The FCC chair, Kevin Martin, stated that, “I am concerned whenever consumers cannot purchase the programming they want or are forced to purchase programming they don’t want.”
This is a lame deal, but ultimately the Extra Innings package isn’t an entitlement. We, as fans, have options, however limited. No one is actually being forced to do anything. This kind of inaccurate rhetoric is what I expected from the FCC.
When I called for people to write to their representatives, it was so they could pressure baseball into considering the fans in this equation. Bringing in the FCC to “investigate” is not the response I had hoped for, or wanted.
Martin wrote that the agency has “contacted the parties and requested additional information about their proposed arrangement. Once we have this information, we will report to you on the deal’s implications for consumers and any recommended changes to the law to ameliorate any harms to consumers.”
Do we really need to legislate the nation’s TV viewing options? Isn’t there a better way to resolve this? Such as simply asking MLB to justify its actions and consider the fans, instead of launching an “investigation” and drawing this into the political realm?
What’s your take? Can the FCC actually do anything, and more importantly, should they?
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Congress and the FCC have a fairly extensive history of acting as advocates for the fans in ensuring the availability of sports programming on television.
Probably the most notable example occurred in 1973. Prior to that, NFL games were blacked out from being broadcast in the home team’s territory, no exceptions…even if the team had sold out its stadium for the season. You didn’t have a ticket, you weren’t permitted to watch the game on television unless you got far enough away from the stadium. President Nixon, a huge sports fan, was furious about not being able to watch Redskins home games in the White House, and leaned on the NFL to change their policy, without success. Congress finally passed legislation in 1973 which established the current NFL blackout rules, namely that if the game is sold out 72 hours in advance it will be shown on local television.
In the current Extra Innings-DirecTV affair, I would have hoped that by now MLB would have seen the reaction of the blogosphere and the mainstream media to this deal and would have retraced their steps. Instead, all evidence suggests that MLB fully intends to stay the course and extend its middle finger toward its most loyal customers.
In the end, I think I agree that Washington should not prohibit private enterprise from making a lousy business deal. But I don’t mind seeing Congress and the FCC put the power of the pulpit to good use in this case. I’m hoping that Bud Selig will see the words “baseball” and “Congressional hearings” in the same sentence and, thinking back to a previous episode, decide maybe that’s a scenario that’s best avoided.
Here’s a fairly lengthy paper that appears to have been written in the mid-1990’s, detailing previous interactions between Congress, the FCC and the pro sports leagues with respect to game broadcasts:
http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v47/no3/cox.html
Eric
Oakland, CA