The five-member FCC is slated to vote September 29 on Wheeler’s latest set-top-box proposal.
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Multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) are the service providers that deliver cable television, such as Comcast, DirecTV and Dish Network.
In a letter sent today to the chairmen of the House and Senate Select Committees on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the WGA West said it supports Wheeler’s apps-based compromise “because it gives consumers real choice in the device used to access to MVPD programming and promotes content competition”. The new proposal grants device makers the ability to integrate cable companies’ apps.
The FCC is scheduled to vote on the proposal later this month.
Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., characterized the set-top box plan as another example of the “extreme partisanship” under Wheeler.
Cable companies have previously expressed concerns that rivals like Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. could create devices or apps and insert their own content or advertising in cable programming.
“The Commission’s proposal to promote new ways for content creators to reach viewers will benefit the creative community, particularly diverse and independent programmers who now have no place in the cable bundle, or who have to give up flexibility to be included”, Public Knowledge says. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat, warned that the plan could face extended litigation.
Wheeler even faces skepticism from inside the FCC, particularly, and most problematically, from his fellow Democratic commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, whose vote Wheeler needs in order to approve the plan at the agency’s open meeting on September 29.
“The creative community, with near unanimity, has made clear from the start that we support competition in the set-top box market”, it said in a Statement. “I’m going to be very candid with you that I have some problems with licensing and the FCC getting a little bit too involved with the licensing scheme here”.
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Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly are opposed to the proposal as it was laid out last week. “I Ask that we do that”. He noted that in Wheeler’s three years the agency has had more 3-2 votes – usually with Democrats Wheeler, Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn in agreement – than over the past 20 years combined.
