PolicyBlog

Although Verizon offers more than 100 HD channels in every FiOS TV market, there are two channels we currently can’t provide in high definition to our customers in downstate New York, western New York and northern New Jersey – the regional sports channels MSG and MSG Plus.

As I've stated before, the reason is simple: Cablevision, which owns MSG and MSG Plus, refuses to supply the programming in high definition to us.  Then Cablevision advertises that they have the most high-definition sports programming in their region.  Of course, they will sell this programming in HD to the other cable guys, like Comcast and Time Warner Cable, against whom they don’t compete head-to-head.  Pretty audacious. 

But wait.  Doesn’t the FCC require that cable companies make the programming they control available to competitors?  Well, yes.  But Cablevision and some of its brethren maintain that they can refuse to provide certain programming – including the regional and local sports programming that the FCC has called “must have” for many consumers – by exploiting the famous “terrestrial loophole” and routing the programming to other providers using terrestrial wires, rather than satellites.  The Long Island cable company argues that since they deliver the “HD feed” of their sports channels terrestrially, they don’t have to provide the HD.

Today, we asked the Federal Communications Commission to stop cable companies from blocking access to the regional sports programming or the HD format of that programming, no matter how a cable incumbent may decide to deliver it.  It’s pretty obvious that actions like these by the cable companies deny consumers a meaningful competitive choice in video services.  As one federal court recognized earlier this week, the Cable Act authorizes the FCC to take action to prevent these types of anticompetitive practices.

We know that regional sports programming, and the HD of that programming, are important, and many consumers simply won’t choose FiOS TV or any other video service if they can’t watch their local sports teams or if they can’t watch them in HD.  It’s time for the FCC to take action and ensure that consumers really have a meaningful choice.