Super Bowl Update

The U.S. Senate's Commerce Committee will open a hearing Tuesday to review the Cable Act.

The Act (which is formally known as the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act), which was passed nearly 20 years ago, laid the foundation for retransmission consent and its associated fees, leading to disagreements between programmers and pay-TV providers which have caused numerous blackouts in the past few years, including the most recent ones between Viacom and DirecTV and between Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television.

“We can’t look to the future of video without evaluating the Cable Act’s impact on the modern television marketplace,” said West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the committee.

Representatives of pay-TV companies Time Warner Cable, Dish Network and DirecTV, and program providers Hearst Television, Viacom and AMC Networks will be on hand to testify before the committee.

While it won't be surprising if the senators on the committee stomp their feet and decry the ever-more-frequent blackouts, it's not expected that any real action will come from the review, at least not at this point.

In a related matter, the CEO of one cable company which serves several Tri-State and surrounding communities (see list below) has issued an interesting proposal related to the Commerce Committee hearing.

Rocco Commisso, CEO of Mediacom, sent a letter to the committee on Friday, in which he proposed freezing Mediacom's cable prices (which currently range from $27 to $68 a month) for two years - if programmers will likewise freeze their rates for that same period.

MediaPost's David Goetzl writes that the proposal could entice lawmakers to keep things as they are for now, if it works. "Looking internally, Commisso’s thrust is a two-year moratorium could give the pay-TV industry some time to reflect on potential long-term damage from spiraling content costs," Goetzl wrote. "If content providers and distributors need each other, a cycle where Mediacom charges customers more because ESPN is costing it more can trickle down and drive customers away, hurting both entities."