pay-TV

Content Companies Commend Box-Ditching Effort 

0502_washington_fccheadquarters_91Major content companies 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS and Scripps offered their support for the basics of cable operators’ “ditch the box” set-top proposal in meetings with top aides to Republican commissioner Ajit Pai last week but said it needed tweaking to insure content protections.

They told the staffers that of the “various alternatives” the FCC is considering for boosting competition in the video navigation space, the apps-based MVPD plan “offers a constructive foundation for providing consumers with an alternative to leasing set-top boxes, subject to certain additional protections for programmers and the clarification of particular details.”

Source: Content Companies Commend Box-Ditching Effort | Broadcasting & Cable

Rights and the Set-top Box

The formal comsettop _box_openment period in the Federal Communications Commission’s set-top box proceeding closed this week after tallying 256,747 submissions. Most were canned comments submitted by consumers who had been rounded up for the purpose by interest groups on both sides of the issue. But the controversial proposal to require pay-TV providers to “unlock” the set-top box and make disaggregated elements of their service available to third-party device makers and app developers also drew over 1,000 substantive comments from rights owners, members of the pay-TV industry, technology providers and other agencies of government involved in telecommunications policy.

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