The FCC could soon give more power to cable companies

These changes don&#x27;t sound like they&#x27;re really addressing the core problem.<p>Here&#x27;s how things currently work:<p>- Broadcaster sets rates.<p>- Cable company negotiates and eventually settles (with or without blackouts).<p>- Cable company bundles these rates with other rates from other channels and passes it on to the consumer.<p>- Cable company gets the backlash from the consumer as a result of rate hikes.<p>So as you can likely tell, broadcasters have too much power, because cable companies will ultimately be blamed either for blackouts (failed negotiations) OR for rate hikes. So it puts them in a lose&#x2F;lose situation.<p>Instead what cable should be doing is:<p>- Unbundle channels entirely.<p>- Pass on rate increases to the consumer for that specific channel.<p>- Itemise how much of what you pay goes to the broadcaster Vs. the cable company<p>- Alternatively the cable company could charge $0 on the channels themselves (100% broadcaster) and charge a &quot;delivery fee&quot; or &quot;service fee&quot; on the entire account.<p>This way the broadcaster gets blamed for the rate hikes directly from consumers, and consumers now have more power to drop certain channels if they feel the value they receive is lower than the cost they pay (e.g. $5&#x2F;month for Trutv).<p>That&#x27;s what the FCC should be doing.

I think they should just go a-la-carte on broadcast channels.<p>My mother-in-law lives in a small city where she can pick up the big networks + PBS and some minor networks (CW, ion) with just rabbit ears.<p>With an $80 antenna, I get 11 channels from a city that is 50 miles away. All I had to do is nail a bracket onto the edge of my roof.<p>I am missing CBS and ABC, but I am planning to fill those in with a VHF antenna that points to another city.<p>The difference in picture quality between the HD broadcast vs the compressed &quot;HD&quot; offered by TWC is night and day.<p>It seems to me there is no value in getting a degraded copy of local broadcast TV on cable, so you should be able to opt out of it, or maybe just get broadcast stations that don&#x27;t come in with your antenna.

Alot of people who grew up with cable don&#x27;t even realize broadcast stations exist. I&#x27;ve had to explain to multiple people that you dont need cable to get abc, nbc, etc.

The core problem is the entire idea of timeslotted television content. Content is only available on a certain channel at a certain time of day.<p>What cable companies should be doing is acquiring the rights to broadcast CONTENT. Cable really should just become a massive collection of on-demand content plus live events (think sports).<p>The whole idea of television by timeslot is archaic.

Video is a done deal. Most cable companies lose money on their video packages anyway; they&#x27;re a loss-leader for broadband subs at this point. In 5 years, nobody will be talking about the video business.<p>And the FCC very well should give more power to cable companies, because the cable companies are at a huge disadvantage relative to the big national telcos (aka AT&amp;T and Verizon). AT&amp;T and Verizon are working together to ensure none of the cable companies becomes a national player capable of threatening them. The old Bells are still much, much larger than any of the cable providers, so they can throw their weight around.

I don&#x27;t think anyone should have to pay anything for a broadcast signal within the broadcast area. I mean, it&#x27;s free to anyone with an antenna already. I&#x27;m not sure, but I get the impression that businesses are not allowed to have a TV showing local channels based on the number of them that show a degraded signal from cable when they could just put up an antenna and get HD.<p>OTOH there is some damage done by bundling local channels onto cable - they now have to compete with non-local stuff so the viewership will be lower.

Broadcast is a moot point for anyone with a computer and at least a DSL connection.<p>I&#x27;m done with instant broadcast by any method if it&#x27;s supported with commercials. I have little time free to watch TV. It&#x27;s too valuable to waste 15-20 minutes out of every hour on commercials.

Easier solution: Turn the TV to face the wall and unplug it from the cable company.<p>Net, the OP is about a big battle over something next to worthless.<p>My ISP in effect pays me to accept their &quot;basic* TV service -- I get Internet access and phone with TV for less than without TV.<p>Well, I hadn&#x27;t watched any TV for years. I tried a few months ago to watch the NBA playoffs, but my <i>basic</i> service didn&#x27;t offer that.<p>But for the 2016 elections, I just signed up for an <i>upgrade</i>. But, I&#x27;m not very happy with the upgrade -- it&#x27;s a waste of time and money. Even for the elections, I can get what I want, e.g., transcripts, off the Internet.<p>So, I suspect in another week or so I will cancel the <i>upgrade</i>.<p>Movies? Okay, DVDs or YouTube.<p>How anything could be as bad as TV is a bit beyond me.

From the chart, retransmission fees have gone from $0.2bn to $8.6bn (in 2018, so, a projection) Absolutely, retransmission fees are growing faster than anything else.<p>But Basic Cable net fees have gone from 16.2 to 46.9bn. Fees paid to RSNs (sports?) have (will have?) gone from 2.7 to 7.8bn.<p>$35.8bn change for &quot;cable stuff&quot; vs $8.4bn change for &quot;local stuff&quot;.<p>So, yeah, local broadcasters are rolling in it, but the dollar impact on your bill is from cable+sports programming. (albeit likely on a smaller per-channel basis).

Just push it towards the internet. Encourage broadcasters to directly-market. Now that Android TV is a thing, this can quickly become very user-friendly.