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The FCC Figures
Bill Clinton openly questioned what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. Kevin Martin now will face the test of defining what the meaning of 70 percent is.
Here’s the wording of the pertinent part of the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, on which the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appears ready to base a campaign of imposing new programming and pricing rules on cable television operators, to ensure ‘diversity of information sources.’
From the section on ‘Cable Channels for Commercial Use’:
“At such time as cable systems with 36 or more activated channels are available to 70 percent of households within the United States and are subscribed to by 70 percent of the households to which such systems are available, the Commission may promulgate any additional rules necessary to provide diversity of information sources.”
Now, lawyers are paid much more than the rest of us to figure out how to calculate percentages and what the meaning of 70 percent is.
But here are some relevant figures, in the meantime.
These are Nielsen Media Research numbers, on the Television Bureau of Advertising site.
This basically says that cable is subscribed to in 61.1 percent of television households in this country; and that alternatives, mainly satellite, are subscribed to in 27.5 percent.
And you will note on a summary of the Nielsen findings from July of this year, that cable operators over the last year lost 1.1 million subscribers and reached a 17-year low in penetration of TV households.
Who gained? The satellite TV providers. The ‘alternate’ distributors gained 4.9 million subscribers, reaching in one year 30.6 million households. That’s up from 25.7 million.
Cable’s lobbying group, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, does not disagree, by much. It uses Kagan SNL numbers on its site, to report subscribership as basically flat for the past eight years, at 65.7 million.
And the Satellite Broadcasting & Communications Association count also shows a constant upward line.
The total number of satellite households in June 2007: 29.9 million. That’s up from 20.4 million in June 2003. A 46.5 percent gain, in four years.
Now, the devil will be in the details: Just what number (and source) the FCC uses for its numerator and what number (and source) it uses for the denominator when it calculates the 70 percent.
But even if it somehow finds the 70-70 test passed now, the megatrend is clear. It’ll be short-lived. Somehow, you’d have to think there’s a lot more diversity of information now than in 1984, when the act was instituted, or 1992, when the act was amended.
Market competition already is changing the numerator and denominator. With just satellite service. And now come the telephone companies. Not to mention the Internet.
They’re changing the rules of the game. And the 70 percent number. The FCC doesn’t have to.
More discussion:
FCC Figures: Last Year’s Report
