DENVER — With the Democratic FCC majority once again on the offensive with proposed net neutrality legislation, the cable industry's top policy figure, NCTA: The Internet & Cable Association president and CEO Michael Powell, used an opening session at his industry’s annual tech trade show Wednesday to launch a full-throated, very libertarian-leaning counter-offensive. 

Powell labeled Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s new attempt to reclassify and regulate broadband as a Title II common-carrier service, setting rules preventing ISPs from establishing abusive restrictions and tolls, as an “illusory” effort trying to solve a “fabricated” problem.

Interviewed during a SCTE Cable-Tec Expo keynote session by CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney, Powell described the FCC’s approach as being rooted in regulatory solutions for problems that existed with railroads in the 1800s.

“It’s a shocking mistake,” he said. “It’s not only dated, it’s your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Powell said the cable industry has no economic incentive to arbitrate who does and who doesn’t have access to its network infrastructure. 

“We’re doing pretty damn good with having open pipe,” he said. 

And with artificial intelligence, piracy and Big Tech, Powell questioned the FCC's regulatory priorities. 

Further, he kicked the tires on their use of time and money, given that a Republican win of the White House and Congress next year — or the Supreme Court — could quickly wipe all of the FCC’s net-neutrality work away. 

Net neutrality legislation does have an ephemeral quality that comes and goes with the political cycle. 

In 2017, the FCC under Republican chair Ajit Pai scrapped net neutrality rules established two years earlier by Pai's predecessor, Democrat Tom Wheeler. 

Michael Powell, president and CEO of NCTA–The Internet & Television Association, plans to tell Congress Tuesday (December 13) that a lot could go wrong with the government’s multibillion dollar, multiagency effort to achieve universal broadband if the Biden administration isn't careful about how it hands out that money.

According to a copy of his prepared testimony for a Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on “Ensuring Solutions to Meet America’s Broadband Needs,” Powell points to several risks given that the broadband subsidy money is being handed out via more than 100 programs and by a “dizzying array” of government agencies.

Powell pointed to four main risks, number one being the forces pushing for spending the money “in towns and communities with better economics, where broadband already exists.”

The White House has made it clear that availability entails more than access and includes affordability, competition, access to information about the value of broadband and training in how to use it and service quality.

Powell said that to spend limited resources on places where there is broadband service already would be a fatal error that would leave unserved “still hunger for their first taste of broadband.”

Powell says the other risks are 2) insufficient coordination among those 100-plus programs, which could lead to “confusion, delay, waste and poor results”; 3) policy creep, in which a “bottomless number” of policies and regulations could destroy a viable revenue model and drive some providers away, policies/regulations like “forms of rate regulation, open-access requirements, buy American provisions, and labor rules”; and 4) a failure to hew to clear, measurable criteria for buildout success and effective oversight, without which he said “ambiguous criteria, poor controls, and grants to inexperienced providers will, as it has in the past, lead to a great deal of waste, fraud and abuse.”

Powell told the subcommittee that he thought the programs held great promise, but only if it learns from and does not repeat past mistake that he said “have often failed because resources were mistargeted, or poorly administered by both government agencies and ineffective providers.” ▪️

Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association and former Federal Communications Commission chair, will testify December 13 at a Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on "Ensuring Solutions to Meet America's Broadband Needs."

The hearing is being convened by Communications Subcommittee Chair Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.).

The hearing will look at the general availability of broadband and the effort to close the broadband accessibility gap, with a focus on rural, tribal and low-income areas.

Also testifying will be Jonathan Spalter, president of USTelecom, Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and Kimball Sekaquaptewa, chair of Connect New Mexico Council.

"This hearing will examine ongoing and past efforts within the public and private sectors to bring affordable, resilient and secure broadband to all communities," Luján's office said. ■

Michael Powell, president of NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, took aim at new legislation unveiled Thursday, the latest effort to classify internet access as a Title II telecommunications service, or what Powell calls "the nuclear option."

Saying the effort would "slap an outdated and burdensome regulatory regime on broadband networks," Powell argued the result would be to damage the "mission to deploy next-generation internet technology throughout America and get everyone connected." The Biden Administration is investing tens of billions of dollars into that mission.

"Twenty years into an increasingly stale debate over net neutrality, the justifications for it seem increasingly limp," said Powell, who as FCC Chairman oversaw an initial statement of open internet principles, though a court later ruled that it was not an enforceable regime.

Also: Sen. Markey to Introduce Net Neutrality Bill

"The breathless assertions over the years that the internet is gravely threatened because ISPs would block or throttle traffic and erect toll booths to charge internet companies to reach consumers have proven hollow and unrealized," Powell continued in a statement following the bill's unveiling in a Zoom call, with plans to answer questions via Reddit. "The claim that ISPs would not invest in expanding capacity and speed wilts in the shadow of massive expansion to gigabit networks today with efforts driving rapidly to 10G networks in a few years," he argued.

Add in the "massive expansion" of wireless networks, he said, and the reality on the ground "hardly align(s) with the corroded narrative that ISPs are motivated to create scarcity on their networks to hold internet companies or consumers hostage."

"The case is particularly thin to justify the famed 'nuclear option' to reclassify carriers under Title II utility regulation which empowers the FCC with the authority to go big on new regulation."

It is the nuclear option because while Republicans have supported net neutrality rules against blocking, throttling and anti-competitive paid prioritization, doing so under Title II is a nonstarter on that side of the aisle and may not have everyone on the other side, either.

Powell said it was time to focus on building out broadband, not "taking a ride on the net neutrality carousel for the umpteenth time for no discernable reason." 

Powell's sentiments were echoed by Jonathan Spalter, president of USTelecom. 

"Broadband providers support net neutrality and already operate under these important principles while delivering real value and performance to customers. Providers are making critical investments at record highs even as prices continue to drop. Especially during a period of inflation, this is an incredible success story," he said. "There is bipartisan support for net neutrality, but legislative proposals that would put any of this progress at risk are not the right answer. Let’s keep our focus on moving consumers’ internet experiences forward, not backward."

"Net Neutrality may be a mixed bag, but common carrier regulation would inhibit competition, private investment and innovation, and further confound the complex task of eradicating of the digital divide," said Eric Slee, VP of government affairs for WISPA, the wireless internet service providers association. 

Slee says "the specter of open access, service and rate regulation, among other Title II mandates, would result in fewer solutions and deployment growth in the very areas most in need of it."■

The Cable Center said it has named six industry veterans to its 2022 Cable Hall of Fame class and they will be celebrated at a red carpet event at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York on September 15.

The event marks the first year the celebration will be held in person since the 2020-21 gala was held virtually.

The honorees, selected for their groundbreaking leadership and entrepreneurship in the connectivity, content and media industry, are:

• Patricia Jo Boyers – President/CEO & Co-Founder, BOYCOM Cablevision, Inc.; Chairman of the Board of Directors, ACA Connects

• Kevin Casey – President, Northeast Division of Comcast Cable

• Chris Lammers – COO Emeritus and Senior Executive Advisor, CableLabs

• Tina Perry – President, OWN TV Network & OTT Streaming

• John C. Porter II – CEO, Telenet Group Holding

• The Honorable Michael K. Powell – President & CEO, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association; Former Chairman of the FCC

"Our 2022 Cable Hall of Fame class represents the ‘best of the best’ of our industry. Each of these trailblazers has worked to shape the cable and video entertainment industry through their leadership and pioneering ideas," said chairman of The Cable Center board of directors and CEO of Penthera Partners Michael Willner in a press release. "We are also thrilled to welcome everyone back to the red carpet for our Cable Hall of Fame celebration this fall in New York."

Since 1998, 147 luminaries have been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame.

"The entrepreneurial spirit and dedication shown by this year’s inductees has had an immeasurable impact on our industry throughout the world. We can’t wait to gather in person again and honor them at our celebration at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 15," Cable Center CEO Diane Christman said in a press release. ■

More information on the event can be found here. ■  

Women in Cable Telecommunications extended its condolences to Michael Powell, president of NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, on the death of his father, Colin Powell.

Colin Powell, former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died Monday of complications from COVID-19. He was reportedly fully vaccinated. He was also battling cancer.

“General Powell, first Black U.S. Secretary of State and youngest chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, serves as a role model for generations of individuals who aspire to greatness,” WICT said. “Our love and prayers go out to the entire Powell family during this time of sorrow.”

NCTA also stated a message of condolence to the Powell family. Dave Watson, President & CEO Comcast Cable and NCTA Board Chair, said: “On behalf of the staff of NCTA and the Board of Directors, we would like to offer our deepest condolences to the family of Gen. Colin Powell, including our dear colleague and friend, Michael Powell. Today, America lost a trailblazing leader who always put his country first and led with compassion, dignity and grace. We join with the rest of America in mourning the loss of this remarkable human being.”

Colin Powell was also founding chairman of America’s Promise Alliance, an alliance of various groups that advocates for effective education and opportunities for youth, as well as safe and supportive, all issues that implicate broadband given the internet's role in education, opportunity, and virtual environments. Michael Powell is vice chairman of the group.

“Americans will remember Gen. Colin Powell for a long time as a model soldier, diplomat, White House advisor and a voice of wisdom and reason who reassured the country that it can meet any challenge by living up to its best ideas," said ACAC Connects President Matt Polka. "Gen. Powell leaves a remarkable record that we are proud to honor and recognize as so many others around the nation are properly doing today.

“We want to express our support and prayers for Gen. Powell’s family, including NCTA-The Internet & Television Association President & CEO Michael Powell, on the loss of this fine man. They should know that America is a great country because people like Gen. Powell led her with unselfish devotion.”

Also weighing in was the association representing the nation's public/educational ,media. 

America's Public Television Stations (APTS)  President Patrick Butler said millions of children had benefitted from Colin Powell's work with America's Promise. "[Powell] ensured that the welfare of children was a priority not only for parents, teachers and government agencies but also for some of the nation’s largest corporations, foundations and community organizations," said Butler, adding: "“It was my honor to serve briefly with General Powell during Senator Howard Baker’s tenure as White House chief of staff for President Reagan, and it was such a pleasure to know that the wise, humble, sensible, profoundly decent man the public saw over five decades in public life was just the same in private."

President Biden said of Powell: "He led with his personal commitment to the democratic values that make our country strong.  He repeatedly broke racial barriers, blazing a trail for others to follow, and was committed throughout his life to investing in the next generation of leadership.  Colin Powell was a good man who I was proud to call my friend, and he will be remembered in history as one of our great Americans."

Cox Communications CEO Patrick Esser’s decision to retire at the end of the year — he will be succeeded by company veteran Mark Greatrex — was met throughout the industry with equal parts regret at losing yet another of cable’s old guard and good wishes that one of the good guys gets to end his decades-long cable story on his own terms. 

Esser got his start in the cable business in 1979 as a pole climber for a small cable operator in Waterloo, Iowa. According to an interview he did with this reporter back in 2013 after receiving the industry’s highest honor — the Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership — Esser packed up his belongings and drove 1,000 miles to Hampton Roads, Virginia, the site of Cox's latest system buy. The catalyst? One of his sales managers in the Waterloo system was a former Cox employee who couldn’t stop talking about what a great company it was to work for. The then 20-something Esser decided to see for himself.  

“I knocked on the door of the cable system and I got a job as the public-access director,” Esser said at the time. “Everything I heard about Cox was true from the moment I stepped on the property.”

Esser’s first job at Cox was officially director of programming at the Hampton Roads system, and he was part of the management team that pioneered Cox’s advertising sales division now known as Cox Media. In 1991 he was named corporate vice president of advertising sales, rising to vice president of operations for Cox’s Western Division in 1999. A  year later he was promoted to senior vice president of operations and in 2004, Esser was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer.

In 2006, Esser was tapped to succeed CEO James Robbins, who had said earlier that he would retire that year. Robbins, who died in 2007,  said in a July 2005 interview he couldn’t have hoped for a better person to take the reins.

“Pat has absolutely been the home-run selection,” Robbins said in that July 2005 interview. 

Esser didn’t just have an impact on his own company. While he spearheaded and pushed along efforts to diversify Cox’s workforce and bring the company into the information age, he also enthusiastically waved the cable banner wherever he went. Throughout the years he served as chairman of  NCTA: The Internet & Television Association;  C-SPAN; CableLabs; adviser to the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) and on the national Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. 

“Pat Esser’s contribution to our industry has been invaluable,” said NCTA: The Internet and Television Association CEO Michael Powell in a statement. “He’s a true cable success story, rising through the ranks from local executive to company CEO. Throughout, he has represented the heart and soul of our industry, always committed first to the welfare of Cox customers and employees.”

Through his journey throughout the industry, Esser has worked closely with other cable and telecom CEOs. He serves on C-SPAN’s board with Charter Communications chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge and has served with Mediacom Communications founder, chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso on the C-SPAN and NCTA boards. 

“Pat’s had a great career starting at entry level and rising to the top,” Rutledge said in a statement. “I’ve enjoyed working aside him on Industry efforts at NCTA and CableLabs.  Pat’s contribution to the industry is unmatched.  I have been personally lucky to work with Pat in an industry where long term business success has kept us on the same team for decades.  It’s been a pleasure.”

National Cable Television Cooperative CEO Lou Borrelli has known Esser for years, dating back to their early days in cable. Borrelli has logged 43 years in the cable business, beginning with UA-Columbia Cablevision in 1978. Borrelli also was a founding partner of Marcus Cable in 1986. 

"I had the good fortune to meet Pat back when our cable careers were getting off the ground," Borrelli said in a statement. "His energy was infectious and his word was his bond. Through numerous CTAM collaborations, Pat never ran out of ideas and always was up to the challenge. His track record at Cox is a testament to his work ethic and his ethics in business and life. Good luck and godspeed."

Esser also helped drive Cox forward as the industry changed, building on its decades-long reputation as the “gold standard” for the cable industry and unafraid to invest in new businesses like broadband.

“During Pat’s 15 years at the helm, Cox Communications became the gold standard of U.S. telecom companies,” Commisso said in a statement. “Through his many operational successes at Cox and his leadership within NCTA, Pat motivated us all to make the significant private investments necessary to turn our collective broadband networks into America’s most powerful technology platform.   I thank him for his tremendous contributions to our industry and wish Pat and his family all the best in the years ahead.” 

Powell also pointed to Esser’s history as a champion of the NCTA, leading its board of directors and trade show several times, and his commitment to diversity, both at Cox and throughout the industry. 

“Pat has been a leader and innovator in cable marketing; a visionary in cable operations and technology; an ally and champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and a thoughtful, forward-looking President & CEO of his company,” Powell continued. “As one of our industry’s most trusted and authentic voices, Pat has immense credibility with policy makers. He has helped provide a strong presence for our industry here in Washington and always has committed Cox Communications to the public good. I will miss Pat enormously as a friend, mentor, and advisor on all of our critical issues. We wish only the very best for him in his next chapter. We’re looking forward to working with Mark Greatrex, another formidable presence in our industry who will be a positive force as we move into the future.”

Esser has served as chairman of C-SPAN for about two years but has been a member of the organization since 2005. The Cox chief has also been a regular video contributor, participating in trade show forums broadcast on the channel ranging from the future of the cable business to Open Internet and consolidation. 

“You can't ask for a better chairman than Pat Esser,” C-SPAN said in a statement. “He is passionate about C-SPAN's mission and shares that enthusiasm throughout Cox. Over the past two years, he has been readily available with strategic guidance and encouragement as our network navigates a changing marketplace and we are confident we can continue to call on his wise counsel into the future.”

In 2006, Cox was first named in DiversityInc's listing of the Top 50 Companies for Diversity and in 2020, reached its highest ranking at No.11. Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) regularly recognizes Cox among the top operators for women.

"Pat Esser is an industry legend — 15 years of exemplary leadership at the helm of Cox and countless beneficiaries of his dedication to the industry and its DEI efforts,” Maria E. Brennan, WICT President & CEO, said in a statement. “We likewise congratulate Pat’s accomplished successor at Cox, Mark Greatrex, and look forward to continuing our strong partnership with the Cox leadership team."

The story of cable video's demise is overstated, but even given the shift to over-the-top platforms, cable companies equally benefit from that as the country's leading broadband providers.

That was according to a bearded Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, on this week's episode of C-SPAN's Communicators series.

Powell said he had been hearing the cord-cutting narrative for over a decade and cable companies added subs during the pandemic, continue to have sound financial performance, and said that most Wall Street analysts are bullish on the industry's future.

Also Read: NCTA's Powell: Cable Scores with OTT As Well As Traditional Video

On the issue of infrastructure funding, the Biden Administration's planned billions of dollars in broadband buildout subsidies rely heavily on funding municipal broadband, something Powell said may be problematic.

He said it was not accurate to say that broadband operators don't think there are any areas where municipal broadband or local coops aren't part of the solution. But he said the government "would be wise to look carefully at the history of municipal networks and their success rates" given that Powell said the vast majority of those over the last decade have failed. That has been one of the arguments by cable operators for why they backed state legislation limiting muni broadband nets.

He pointed to a Bristol, Virginia, muni fiber network that failed to the tune of $130 million and Provo, Utah, with a failed network that was sold to Google for a dollar but retained $40 million in debt. 

He said that often the projects are built, but then it is the challenging ongoing operational costs that "often make it a poor choice" for deploying broadband.

He said to prioritize such buildouts--as the Biden infrastructure plan appears to do--"fails to diagnose the problem accurately," he said. He said do muni when it makes sense, but added that the majority of successful buildouts are not government run. 

Also Read: NCTA's Powell on Broadband Subsidies: Spend Smart

Powell said the Biden broadband infrastructure plan's goal of future-proofing the networks it is funding is a "respectable instinct." But the key is what that means, suggesting the government's crystal ball may not provide a clear picture. 

The Biden proposal suggests that the definition of "unserved" could include price and competition as well as speed. Powell said "unserved" should mean "no broadband" or "very little" broadband or inadequate, rather than spending to upgrade communities that have adequate broadband.

Although broadband proposals occupy only four paragraphs in the White House’s 25-page summary of President Joe Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” — the official name for the “infrastructure overhaul” unveiled March 31 — those high-level visions immediately generated intense controversy regarding their implementation. Analysts expect heated economic and political furor as the $100 billion proposal for federal support of broadband expansion, including funding for municipal broadband systems, high-speed mandates and possible price controls, works its way through Congress.

One key goal of the plan is to assure universal broadband access, especially high-speed availability to unserved rural and underserved urban areas. 5G technology will be part of that solution, but the initial vision did not address specifics for wireless delivery in the master plan.  

Even before Biden formally unveiled the proposal at a Pittsburgh speech — in the heart of old rust-belt America — Republicans vowed to slash the $2.2 trillion concept to focus on roads, bridges and broadband projects, and not allow it to cover the climate, energy and “social infrastructure” ideas that Biden espoused. A second phase of the Biden infrastructure agenda, labeled the American Family Plan, was due to be released in April, also calling for $1 trillion to $2 trillion in government funding during the coming decade. 

Since the entire infrastructure plan includes corporate tax increases, it faces severe challenges as it heads to Congress.

The broadband proposal’s congressional journey actually began in the last two months with the introduction of legislation that will become part of Biden’s plan: House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) introduced the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (AAIA), which seeks to invest $94 billion to build high-speed broadband infrastructure in underserved communities, and all 32 Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are co-sponsoring the Leading Infrastructure For Tomorrow’s America (LIFT America) Act, which includes broadband modernization and expansion in its proposed $312 billion spending for energy, water and health-care infrastructure programs. 

The “digital” section of the Biden plan focuses on eliminating the digital divide. It also encompasses tech-related research projects to assure American innovation, some of which could become intertwined with expanded broadband or wireless services. 

‘Revitalize Digital Infrastructure’

Biden cited data indicating that “more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds,” emphasizing the limitations in rural areas and on tribal lands. 

“In urban areas as well, there is a stark digital divide: a much higher percentage of White families use home broadband internet than Black or Latino families,” Biden said. The proposed $100 million investment will “build high-speed broadband infrastructure to reach 100 percent coverage,” Biden added, noting that the plan will ‘future-proof’ broadband infrastructure.

One way to accomplish that is to “prioritize support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, nonprofits, and cooperatives — providers with less pressure to turn profits and with a commitment to serving entire communities,” the plan said. 

Piling on ideas that have traditionally annoyed incumbent telecom companies, Biden focused on price regulation, noting that Americans “pay too much for internet service.” He cited the need to “reduce the cost of broadband internet service and promote more widespread adoption.” The White House policy paper said: “building out broadband infrastructure isn’t enough. We also must ensure that every American who wants to can afford high-quality and reliable broadband internet.”

That goal will be achieved by “lifting barriers that prevent municipally-owned or affiliated providers and rural electric co-ops from competing on an even playing field with private providers, and requiring internet providers to clearly disclose the prices they charge,” according to the plan.

Biden sought to temper this approach by assuring that individual subsidies to cover internet costs will not be a permanent policy. “Continually providing subsidies to cover the cost of overpriced internet service is not the right long-term solution for consumers or taxpayers,” according to the White House.

Opposition Takes Shape

Even before the Biden plan was released, Congressional Republicans announced that they’d only work on legislation that focused on transportation and broadband, not other Biden aspirations such as climate and family care factors.

“I don’t think the bill can grow into a multitrillion dollar catch-all,” said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Missouri), the top Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “It needs to be about roads and bridges.” 

The need for speed fits into many of the initial analyses of the plan, along with an evaluation of whether the overall broadband agenda is good for incumbent carriers or entrepreneurial interlopers. Critics are already speculating incumbent carriers will seek to tailor the eventual legislation to assure their stake in the funding — possibly to the exclusion of entrepreneurial ventures. 

Craig Moffett, principal and senior analyst at research firm MoffettNathanson and a long-time media/telecom analyst, said in an interview that the Biden plan “still feels very much like a provisional first draft at this point.”

“There are some problematic elements, like the symmetrical bandwidth standard,” he said. “On balance, funding to bring broadband to more of America is good news for existing operators.” 

Others questioned whether ideas such as the bidirectional requirement for speeds of 100 megabits per second or 1 gigabit per second should be enshrined in the plan, as proposed by former Federal Communications Commission chairman and Brookings Institute visiting fellow Tom Wheeler. In Congressional testimony in March, Wheeler suggested that symmetrical 1 Gbps service is a necessity, even if it requires a long-term funding subsidy. 

Wheeler, who had a hand in crafting the Biden plan, said it is a “work in progress.” He believes it should be rolled out as a “Fiber First” project, based on FCC studies, an interesting perspective from the lobbyist who once headed CTIA-The Wireless Association. He said the rural prioritization should be about adoption, not just deployment. In that context, he said, price matters to assure that low-income users can afford high-speed access.  

NCTA-The Internet & Television Association president and CEO Michael Powell quickly voiced opposition to government-built broadband subsidies or price regulations. He said the White House’s plan risks making a big “wrong turn” by “discarding decades of successful policy” that is subsidizing hard-to-reach and low-income residents. Powell insisted Biden’s plan is shortsighted in believing “the government is better suited than private-sector technologists to build and operate the internet.”

ACA Connects president and CEO Matthew M. Polka also warned that “more deployment alone will not bridge the digital divide” and insisted that recent federal pro-investment policies have encouraged private-sector expansion of broadband services. 

“As we go forward, we should ‘do no harm’ and not undermine these investment incentives,” Polka, said. He acknowledged “adoption,” not deployment, is a major challenge. 

Michael O’Rielly, principal at MPORielly Consulting and a former FCC commissioner, said the Biden proposal “is based on faulty premises and seems to advocate for indefensible and harmful policy directions.”

“It dismisses calls by many, including myself, to focus on those Americans without broadband service — those truly in need — and charges ahead with a costly, unnecessary, and detrimental proposal that would assault current private broadband providers’ investment and putting at risk all existing federal broadband programs,” O’Rielly said. 

View from Pew Center

The Pew Research Center, which has followed internet and technology developments, focused on the high data speed goals of the infrastructure plan. 

“No matter how this legislation shakes out, lawmakers should set higher speed requirements, prioritize fiber deployment, establish accountability and oversight measures for funds, and address affordability,” said Kathryn de Wit, project director of the broadband access initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts, adding that it’s critical for federal law to address the role of state and local governments.

Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, a telecom-focused think tank, endorsed the infrastructure proposal, but voiced concerns that “the plan will not direct funds primarily to unserved areas. The bulk of any funding should go to areas that do not yet have broadband service.” He also is wary about how “broadband will be defined.” 

Consumer Technology Association president and CEO Gary Shapiro focused on the importance of building broadband infrastructure, including “dig once” policies to free up spectrum for innovators. 

John Lawson, president of Convergence Services and executive director of the AWARN Alliance, believes that the Biden infrastructure programs could seed the market for NextGen TV, citing the FCC’s “broadcast internet” rulemakings as supporting this prospect. He noted that “innovative broadcasters” are working on connected car projects using ATSC 3.0 technology.  

Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, is not happy with the Biden infrastructure plan's focus on subsidizing government-built broadband networks or potentially regulating the prices of private ones. He suggested the Biden has misdiagnosed the problem--which is getting broadband to where it isn't--and its remedy would roll back decades of successes.

Also Read: Biden Plan Pledges Universal Broadband By Decade's End

ISPs have long pushed for limits on government broadband buildouts that can wind up overbuilding existing service or end up with networks that can't support ongoing operations, leaving taxpayers to pick up the slack.

President Biden's just-announced, multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan includes $100 billion for universal, high-speed broadband subsidies targeted to cities and nonprofits combined with an effort to reduce the price of "overpriced" service from commercial ISPs, though just how that would happen is not clear.

In responding to the plan, Powell, former chairman of the FCC and a proponent of closing the digital divide as well, said that while the White House has elected to go big with broadband infrastructure, it was risking making a big "wrong turn" by "discarding decades of successful policy," which is subsidizing hard-to-reach and low-income residents so ISPs can continue to make the money that allows them to invest in build-outs and upgrades.

He said the Biden plan suggests that "the government is better suited than private-sector technologists to build and operate the internet."

Part of the problem, he said, is "mistakenly lumping in our successful modern digital networks with our decaying roads, bridges, waterways and electric grids." Powell has pointed out before that while infrastructure spending is mostly about fixing broken things, broadband networks aren't broken, but instead are continually upgraded.

"While we have seen repeated examples of traditional infrastructure failures in recent years, America’s broadband has been a reliable workhorse as millions of Americans have worked, learned and stayed connected from home during the pandemic," he said in a statement. "Simply put, the high caliber of our broadband networks kept millions of Americans safe and will continue to revolutionize work, healthcare, education and more."

Also Read: Powell on Broadband Subsidies: Spend Smart

Powell said government is needed get service where it is lacking, but that goal is not served by suggesting, without foundation, that the network is "ailing" or that the solution is to favor government-owned networks, micromanage private ones, or regulate prices, adding: "As every doctor knows, the crucial step to prescribing the right remedy is to make the right diagnosis."

With potentially as much as $120 billion in new broadband spending either in the pipeline or contemplated by Congress, the result could be "a golden age of broadband investment, or a costly sinkhole that squanders billions and does little to close actual broadband gaps."

That is according to Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association and former chairman of the FCC, which will be handing out a lot of that money. He is particularly concerned with the legislative proposals that would define existing service as only where there is 100 Mbps download and upload speeds.

Also Read: Broadband Billions to Flow from American Rescue Plan

In a blog post, Powell suggests the squandering could come if Congress does not focus on where there is no broadband at all. Powell said he welcomed the funding effort and recognized that COVID-19 had "amplified" the importance of broadband, but that broadband "have-nots" need to be the priority for all that money.

With Democrats in the majority, allowing municipal networks to overbuild commercial ones, and subsidized providers to overbuild existing plant, and including speed, and perhaps price, in the definition of areas defined as served by broadband, are definitely on the table, something Powell clearly knows.

Powell also put on the problematic side of the ledger setting "aspirational" technical standards--making money contingent on symmetrical 100 Mbps download and upload speeds, for example--rather than rewarding "network investment that offers a logical path to continuous improvement over time and not networks that meet any given standard at a snapshot in time."

The problem with defining unserved as areas without 100 Mbps down/up is that a third of the country is automatically unserved and limited resources go to upgrading existing service to meet the new standard, which is cheaper than building it out to truly unserved areas. "The goal of funding should be to close the gap—not to subsidize areas where broadband connectivity is robust and routinely upgraded to keep ahead of evolving consumer usage and demand," he said. 

He also said on the golden side of the funding future would be to allow engineers, not regulators, to build networks. "Technical neutrality is not just about letting every type of industry compete for public dollars—though that is a virtue. It is about allowing network engineers to develop and design the optimal network for a particular geography," he said, with engineers making the decisions, not regulators, lawyers or lobbyists.

Also Read: FCC Seeks Help in Spending Broadband Billions

"Getting broadband infrastructure to unserved areas in this country has been a tough and perennial problem. Perhaps more than any time in the past, America is on track to solving the vexing challenges of bringing broadband service to communities that have been waiting," Powell wrote. "But it will take more than money to succeed. We also need to make wise policy choices that will advance our primary goal rather than retard it." 

As Black History Month winds down, acting FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel raised up three former chairs or acting chairs with Twitter shout-outs with an #FCCfirsts hashtag.

"The first African American @FCC Chairman was @WEKennard [William Kennard]," she tweeted. "He served from November 1997 to January 2001. During his tenure, he shaped policies that created an explosion of new wireless phones, brought the Internet to a majority of American households, & more. #BlackHistoryMonth."

Also Read: Rosenworcel Takes FCC Gavel

Next came a still-familiar familiar face in cable and broadband circles, Michael Powell, head of NCTA-the Internet & Television Association.

"The second Black @FCC Chairman was @chairmanpowell [Michael Powell], who served from January 22, 2001 until March 17, 2005. During his tenure he focused on consumer issues such as the right to keep your cellphone number when switching carriers and the Do-Not-Call list. #BlackHistoryMonth."

And finally.

"On August 3, 2009, @MignonClyburn became the first Black woman @FCC Commissioner until June 6, 2018," Rosenworcel tweeted. "She was the first Acting FCC Chairwoman from May 20, 2013 to November 4, 2013. She championed diversity in media ownership & Inmate Calling reform. #BlackHistoryMonth #FCCFirsts."

Also Read: Black Voices Rising

Rosenworcel would be a trailblazer herself as the first woman chair if she gets the "acting" removed from her title by President Joe Biden, as many Hill Democratic women have called on the President to do.

Michael Powell, president of NCTA-the Internet & Television Association and former FCC chairman, is suggesting that a tied FCC--currently two Democrats and two Republicans--doesn't mean it should operate as though its hands were tied. 

He is advising the commissioners to take that as an opportunity to build relationships for the tough work ahead, focusing on closing the political divide as it wades into the digital one.

Also Read: Jessica Rosenworcel Named Acting FCC Chairwoman

Powell was being interviewed at the virtual State of the Net conference by Clint Odom, SVP for policy and advocacy at the National Urban League and a former top FCC and Hill staffer, praised Powell's eloquence and then pressed him--there were PAC representatives on the Zoom call--on whether he would be running for the Senate. "I'm just a cable guy," Powell said, smiling.

Powell congratulated acting chair Jessica Rosenworcel, who he said he had once tried to hire when he was chairman, and said the 2-2 political tie was a "special moment of opportunity to build bipartisan relationships" without the pressure of a "clear, unflinching majority." He said it was an opportunity to recognize their mutual dependence and build and nurture bonds for tougher issues "down the line," like addressing broadband access to low income residents and students.

The former FCC chairman said it would be a mistake for the current FCC to sit back and not do anything until the Democrats had that "unflinching" majority, saying that would be the political response. Better, he said, to work harder to get things done together, which would be step toward a less politicized commission. 

He said he regretted the trend in recent years toward that politicization, saying the FCC should wrap itself in its independence and be more more like jurists and less like "mini-politicians." Odom said he hoped the former chairman's advice would be heeded.

Also Read: Congress Needs to Take Up Keep Americans Connected Pledge

Powell said that as a citizen and a human, he never felt more pain that in the summer months of protests over the killing of George Floyd. But he said what emerged was the sense that everyone, every institution, needed to be part of the solution.

He said the same lesson should come out of the Capitol insurrection, that everyone has a responsibility to diffuse the kind of vicious partisanship that took the country to where it is today. He said everyone, including at the FCC, can either contribute to the divisions or choose to doing it a different way, to look for common ground, not scorched earth, to stop demonizing or picking "shallow issues" that are not good policy because they appeal to a political base.

Powell also said that every person, every business, and every agency, needs to recognize their "universe of influence" both in the lack of progress toward overcoming systematic racism and in advancing that progress. Powell said President Biden had struck a beautiful tone in his inaugural remarks about unification. But he also cited poet Amanda Gorman, saying "the hill we climb is high." 

That hill includes not only racial justice but broadband access, which Jesse Jackson, the late John Lewis have all said is THE civil rights issue of today.

Also Read: Pai Says He is Happy to Work with Congress to Help ISPs Recoup Pledge Costs 

Powell said he recognized that his industry has an outsized role and responsibility in helping summit that hill.

In fact, he said when the country closed down last March, he talked to his CEOs about companies having social as well as business responsibilities to that goal, something he says they fully embrace, and told them, invoking Churchill, that this must be their "finest hour." But while they are central players, he says it would be a mistake to equate the importance of connectivity with utility if that means the onerous language that can go with it, a message to those who want to reclassify internet access as a common carrier.

Powell said he was proud of what the industry has done to help carry the country through, and says he thinks the industry will continue to do well by doing good. 

Broadband stakeholders continued to weigh in on the billions of dollars (4& billion to be precise) in new broadband connectivity funding in the COVID-19 relief legislation Congress passed late Monday (Dec. 21).

Also Read: Funding Bills Pass Congress

“The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of broadband and its role in helping Americans stay connected during this public health crisis," said Michael Powell, president of NCTA-the Internet & Television Association. "The COVID relief package rightly focuses on existing broadband gaps and wisely dedicates $7 billion to shrink the digital divide and promote broadband adoption and use. In supporting new pandemic-related assistance for low income families, minority communities and unemployed Americans, Congress importantly recognizes both the value of ongoing private efforts and the virtue of building new support mechanisms that complement and further energize these efforts."

Powell also praised the funding of a congressionally mandated program to come up with better broadband deployment data. "[A]t long last, the COVID relief package provides necessary funding for the development of more accurate broadband maps that will deliver more accurate data, enabling policymakers to better identify unconnected communities and target assistance where it is needed most," he said. "A combination of more accurate maps plus continued refining of how the RUS ReConnect program administers its funding will help ensure that communities without broadband networks are at the front of the line for federal stimulus dollars.”

Also Read: NAB Applauds More Bucks for Broadcasters in COVID-19 Aid Bill

NCTA has consistently said that broadband subsidies should target the unserved, rather than overbuilding in competition with private capital already built out and operating.

“I commend the House and Senate for passing the COVID Relief and Omnibus Appropriations Package, and particularly for including funds for essential broadband services,” said Competitive Carriers Association president Steven K. Berry. “This is a giant step in the right direction. The COVID-19 pandemic has only highlighted the need to ensure that every American, including those in remote and rural areas, have access to mobile broadband services...including $65 million to implement the Broadband DATA Act is key to producing more accurate broadband data maps, so that areas in need have access to critical funds.” 

“I cannot stress enough the significance of fully funding the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program. Carriers with covered network elements now have the assurance they need to move forward with replacing necessary equipment, while still being able to provide seamless coverage to their customers..." The legislation includes $1.9 billion for that reimbursement program, which compensates carriers for replacing equipment from suspect tech suppliers like Chinese telecoms ZTE and Huawei.

“Dedicated funds for broadband mapping, the supply chain reimbursement, low-income broadband, tribal lands and other broadband programs are key to improving the lives of Americans across the country, especially those in rural areas," said Berry. 

“We thank Congress for fully funding the Secure and Trusted Communications Network Reimbursement Program as part of its year-end omnibus legislation," said network software provider Mavenir. "This money will provide affected wireless carriers the resources they need to carry out Congress and the FCC’s directives to remove untrusted Huawei and ZTE equipment from their networks. We stand ready to help these carriers upgrade their systems so they can reap the benefits of more secure, flexible, and cost-effective OpenRAN solutions.”

WISPA, the wireless internet service providers association, said: "The support provided within the COVID-19 bill will help WISPs stay up and running, and keep their customers online."

NCTA-the Internet & Television Association President Michael Powell said that when it comes to universal broadband service, it is always hard when you get to the last portion of the population still on the other side of digital opportunity, so government needs to step up funding, including perhaps making broadband service part of the social safety net, like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

But he points out that there was the same issue with other infrastructure, whether electricity or indoor plumbing or roads.

Powell was speaking at the Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications Partnership virtual Digital Inclusion Summit Thursday (Dec. 3), which was focused on the importance of getting broadband to that last portion, which over-indexes for minorities and the poor.

Related: Trade Groups Press Hill for Broadband Funding

While he said broadband has probably been the fastest-deploying technology in history, so there is much to celebrate in the number of people who have been reached, and with what speed. But he said that because of the economics of infrastructure build-outs, it gets "really hard" to get to those last folks, and cited two distinct problems: 

First is the people who don't have the infrastructure to begin with, which he calls an economic problem of enormous proportion. "Put simply, if I have to run a wire between two homes that are three hundred miles apart to pick up two customers paying $50 a month. That is a heinous economic equation that is just insurmountable by most economic and financial models."

Related: Powell Says Justice Is Businesses Business

He said the government has to be a partner in that effort because there are only two ways to solve that problem, which is either find more revenue to offset the costs of reaching those people, or lower the cost through technology or some other way. But he said the big issue remains the "scary" sums of money needed to get to full digital inclusion. 

The second problem is adoption and affordability. He said that problem is more complex than the first. On adoption, he said he is surprised by the people who say they don't value the service enough to purchase it. On affordability, he said that while he thinks the rates are "generally pretty good," they are expensive for some people, which affects urban poor and large families with limited disposable income. But you also have to have devices.

Finally, he said, there is another problem: The skills required to negotiate the internet. "We have to be committed to developing the skills and education necessary to take full advantage of the internet."

Powell said the FCC does a lot in terms of funding, but Congress needs to do more. 

"Is broadband going to be part of the social safety net," he asked. "If we believe broadband is an essential service, we are going to find a way to include some sort of support for those who are down on their luck or out of work or are struggling with the expenses associated with the service."

Powell agreed that access to technology is a civil rights issue.

He said there is no view of the future that is not rooted in technology.

"In our world, in cable, we are working on tools that folks need to get in the game," he said. "But how well they play in that game is going to depend on attacking the chronic problems that stem from racial and gender equality...I want our society to see this as a big, comprehensive problem, part of the systematic racism, part of the growing equality work."

 The industry’s Diversity Week festivities may not have been in person this year, but issues of diversity and inclusion remained front and center at the virtual events held by Women in Cable Telecommunications and the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications.

Both WICT and NAMIC reported higher-than-expected attendance for their virtual presentations, which ran through most of last week. Between live registrations and on-demand signups, WICT said it has surpassed all previous WICT Leadership Conference attendance numbers with more than 843 registered attendees, while NAMIC reported registrations were up 40% from last year's in-person event. Both the WICT Leadership Conference and the NAMIC Conference were held at the New York Marriott Marquis hotel in 2019.

COVID-19-related disruptions in business operations both in the office and the studio  — as well as the social unrest in the country initiated by the May 25 death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody — provided a backdrop to the issue of the industry’s continuing efforts to become more diverse and inclusive within the executive ranks and on the screen.

NCTA–The Internet & Television Association president and CEO Michael Powell said during a WICT Oct. 5 session that Floyd’s killing, as well as other high-profile deaths of people of color at the hands of police, has galvanized both individuals and businesses toward a social justice movement within the country. 

“Business really had a wake up call in a way that I had not seen happen before,” Powell told session moderator Lori Hall, of marketing agency Pop’N Creative. “You’re seeing a lot more willingness by a new generation of business leaders to speak up and commit their company culture resources to important social questions facing the nation.” 

ViacomCBS president and CEO Bob Bakish said during NAMIC’s virtual town hall on Oct. 8 that the conversations on race relations within companies are taking on greater relevance due to the events of this year. 

“I would say that eight minutes and 46 seconds really jolted us,” Bakish said of the time police kneeled on Floyd’s neck prior to his death. “It’s created a reckoning that’s led us all to confront systematic racism and bias that lives around us. We need to examine what we need to do to make diversity, inclusion, equity and justice a reality for everyone.”

Executives said part of that reality is further diversifying the executive ranks, as well as creating content that more accurately depicts the images and stories of people of color. While those efforts continue, speakers said the pandemic had created a new normal that the industry is still adjusting to and grappling with. 

The pandemic “has enabled us to think so much more creatively and pivot and work very quickly in brand new ways that we never thought we could,” Discovery Inc. chief lifestyle brands officer Kathleen Finch said during an Oct. 5 WICT session called “Navigating Chaos in a COVID World.”

Black News Channel president and CEO Princell Hair added it's important for the industry in general and the country at large to continue to remain diligent in diversity and inclusion efforts while not turning a blind eye to the plight of those who may have different experiences. 

“There’s a call to action that hasn’t been there in the past,” Hair said. “You can’t change what you don’t see, and it feels like society at large is really seeing what the problem is. It’s not just the people that are impacted by these various social injustices, coronavirus or struggling economy.” 

Calvin Coolidge is credited with saying “the Business of America is Business.” It is not.

The business of America is building a just society, where every life has worth.

America’s founding citizens agreed to be governed by a new Constitution on the express prerequisite that “all men are created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” that could not be abridged by the state. The most precious of those rights was the right to life. On a street in Minneapolis, an officer of the law whose power derives from this very compact, casually snatched the life of George Floyd, an African-American citizen. It was murder in violation of criminal law. It was also attempted murder of the very soul of the American ideal.

A black life should not be worth less. A black life should not have fewer rights. As long as that is the case, America is cracked and deeply broken. I am anguished. My heart hurts. Tears well in my eyes. Because Mr. Floyd is dead, but also because America is critically wounded if it does not right itself.

Business is about business. Many believe that its only allegiance is to shareholders.

That is wrong, too.

Businesses hold an exceptionally important place in American life. They wield economic power and they also can wield important social power. They should turn to the mirror and examine themselves. They should heal the wounds that reside within their own walls and evaluate where they sit in the machinery of systemic racism. This moment, however, requires more than introspection. We need business leaders to stand; stand for their black employees, stand for their black customers, stand for all black citizens and use their formidable might to roar into the face of the monster that is racism in America. 

Michael Powell is president and CEO of NCTA: The Internet & Television Association and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Once upon a time - until four years ago - May or June was Cable Show season. At about this time of year, for three or four days, cable operators and vendors conferred and cajoled and congratulated each other on the industry's successes.

For the past few years, many cable veterans have lamented the loss of the annual convention which ran for more than 50 years. Although the final INTX convention - the re-renamed National Cable TV Association annual gathering - unfolded then folded in 2016, there are plenty of memories of the people and especially the parties of bygone years. When I posted about a dozen of my photos from 2010 through 2016 conventions on the Facebook "Cable Old Timers" page  last week, the comments and the deluge of others' personal memories was overwhelming.

The following pictures, a few of which were on the social media page, are from my personal snaps. I tried to emulate the tradition of the late Burt Harris , who was notorious for taking and sharing friends' pictures back in the film era. I've included one selfie: an in-flight picture with a former NCTA President plus a photo from my earliest days at an NCTA convention - a reminder of how cable old timers spend their lives in and around the industry. There are plenty more where these came from in my film collection.

Related: INTX 2016: Cable Icons Take Aim at Trump

For today's memories, let's focus on people-at-parties and in deals, , not panelists on platforms or products in booths. After all, what we really miss about those Cable Shows is seeing old friends (sadly some of them no longer with us).

This photo from the 2011 show generated the most responses on Facebook, and it's from a truly memorable moment on the show floor in Chicago. Jim Chiddix (left), the retired Time Warner Cable top techie, and I were strolling when we bumped into Sid Topol, former CEO/President of Scientific-Atlanta (2nd from right), who was doing booth duty for a start-up in which he had invested. As the three of us were chatting, along comes Julian Brodsky (right) and Mark Coblitz (between Chiddix and Topol) - the investment guys at Comcast. What ensued was a classic moment of showfloor drama. The booth's sales chief, seeing the Comcast badges but not knowing Brodsky and Coblitz's roles, went into a standard pitch about the qualities and capabilities of the product. Topol quickly shut him up and summoned the company's president, who recognized the opportunity to plunge into a much higher-level spiel about this technology's value to Comcast. I never heard the ending of that story (whether Comcast put up any funding or even whether the company survived), but it was an incredble meeting of great minds and leadership amidst the hubbub of the convention floor.

At the 2010 Convention in Los Angeles, the Chairman's Reception was awash with cable celebrities enjoying the sundown on the terrace near the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Don't we wish we could know what some of these executives were discussing - or trying to learn from each other.

The L.A. convention always brought out a lot of familiar faces - and no one know if they were just being friendly or cooking up deals.

In 2011 in Chicago Linda Brodsky reminisced with her original CATV mentor Selman Kremer at the Pioneers banquet. He hired her at Jerrold Electronics and they both went on to varied careers in the MSO and technologies worlds (and I was fortunate to keep up with both of them until their deaths a couple years apart in different parts of the country).

At the Boston Cable Show in 2012, leaders of the current C-SPAN braintrust gathered momentarily: Bruce Collins, Susan Swain and Rob Kennedy, with attorney Mark Palchick photobombing in the right corner.

Legendary MSO and investor John Evans hobnobbed with scrivener Pat Gushman. Always-ebullient NCTA Senior VP Barbara York was ecstatic at the Vanguard luncheon on the last day of the Boston Show.

In 2013 in Washington, DC, Kay Koplivitz (who had already moved on to consulting and investment projects, especially encouragement of women in business) huddled with Larry Kramer, who had recently become President/Publisher of USA Today after a long career in electronic and print media.

By then, there were already signs of the changes in the cable industry operations: the once overflowing publication bins of free magazine samples were virtually empty and the message boards were irrelevant as the texting era evolved, and no need for printed press release handouts in the Media Room.

At the Los Angeles Show in 2014, former NCTA President Tom Wheeler (at top) was not warmly greeted, but current President Michael Power enjoyed himself playing futuristic videogames in the Internet of Things showcase on the convention floor.

By showtime in Boston in 2016, it was obvious that exhibitors didn't need the Show anymore, evidenced by the acres of empty space in the convention hall.

There were pleasant reminders of eternal creativity from tech veterans Ted Hartson and Walt Ciccoria, who donned QR emblem sweatshirts from their latest brainchild SymbolShifters, which sought to embed  interactivity into older DTV receivers.

I flew home that year from the Boston convention with Robert Schmidt, who was NCTA President while I was on the association's staff.

It was another good reason to remember one of my first NCTA conventions circa 1978 when Brian Lamb (before C-SPAN) and Robert Luff (before his Scientific-Atlanta and NBC gigs) were aboard the paddle-boat party in New Orleans.

And finally, here's a memory of the last photo from the last event at the last NCTA gathering - the Vanuard Awards ceremony at the 2016 Boston convention. I had already headed to the airport, so I inveigled the NCTA staff to help me find this appropriate final memory photo.

NCTA's Wyatt Barnett, senior director of Industry & Association Affairs, acknowledges that this photo of the 2016 Vanguard winners "was never posted for reasons that have been lost to the sands of time." So here is the first appearance of the last photo from the conventions of the past decade.

Many happy memories to all.

Cable operators are using the rise of both over-the-top video and the novel coronavirus in arguments to the Federal Communications Commission for help in deregulating the market for both video and broadband services.

It has been a couple of years since video streaming overtook traditional cable and broadcast TV as the top video destination for children and families, and cable operators want the FCC's rules and regulations to catch up to that reality.

Back in 2018, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association noted the turning point and tried to get the FCC to adjust children's advertising rules accordingly as part of a revamp of those rules.

For one thing, cable operators are limited in how they can display website addresses in children's programming, even as the web is where most kids are accessing video.

"Advertisers are following children’s viewership to new online platforms," NCTA told the FCC back in 2018, while cable-network programmers continue to be hamstrung by the agency’s advertising restrictions.

Despite that pitch, the FCC chose not to undertake an extensive revamp of cable ad rules as part of its adjustment of the children’s TV regulations.

Fast-forward to today, when the FCC is compiling data for a congressional report on competition in the communications marketplace.

NCTA is again pushing the FCC to loosen up the kids‘ programming rules, and again citing over-the-top providers for leveling what the cable trade group calls a playing field tilted toward online video, though without seeking regulations on the latter to level the playing field. NCTA under president and CEO Michael Powell has historically tried to steer clear of seeking new rules on competitors, as a regulatory arms race hurts both sides. But cable operators are also moving over the top, so it would be against their interests to seek new regs on a technology that most see as their future.

Equal Treatment for Equal Services

NCTA is telling the FCC that similar services — multichannel and OTT video — should not have dissimilar regulatory treatment, public-interest obligations and customer-service rules, for example.

The trade association says that in addition to being arbitrary and capricious, such treatment skews the competitive marketplace, with cable operators being the ones getting skewed.

For example, it said, none of the "myriad" children's TV ad restrictions on cable apply to OTT streamers like Netflix or Amazon or YouTube.

The cable industry (operators and programmers) has argued that disparity is particularly problematic, after the industry spent billions of dollars "developing trusted brands that serve the programming needs of parents and children."

On the broadband competition side, NCTA draws a direct link between deregulation and the industry’s success at handling the extra load that the COVID-19 stay-at-home population has put on their networks.

The argument is that it is not regulation, but all the competition from mobile wireless, offering speeds that are catching up with, and in some cases on par with, fixed broadband. The competitive pressure — and speed gains — will only increase with the migration of mobile to 5G. Then there are the low-earth-orbit satellite services, including the SpaceX venture backed by Amazon, that could provide 1-gigabit speeds.

Competitive pressure has forced cable operators to invest in their networks and technology to stay ahead of the curve in order to retain (and add) broadband customers, NCTA says. That investment has paid off in the time of coronavirus.

“Even as there have been substantial increases in the amount of traffic on the network and substantial shifts in peak period traffic patterns, cable broadband networks have continued to perform at exceptional levels,” NCTA said.

NCTA’s online COVID Dashboard, for example, shows that while usage has increased “substantially” since the virus began sending people home to shelter-in-place in early March, “over 99% of the customers of major cable operators have not experienced any material impact.”

While NCTA makes traditional asks, like freeing up more spectrum for unlicensed use and revising program carriage rules and reporting requirements, it also says the FCC needs to add a COVID-related push, but a gentle one, for state action on pole attachments and backing a special Lifeline fund.

As part of an effort to speed pole attachments and various local site reviews, the FCC has put local government officials on a time clock. But, as the FCC points out, those officials might be “delayed or precluded from responding to permit requests in a timely manner because of the crisis.”

NCTA isn’t asking the FCC to lower the boom as it were, but says the agency should consider using its “persuasive powers” to “remind” local officials and pole owners that broadband providers are also actively working to help consumers work and learn from home during the crisis, and a little flexibility on their part would be helpful.

Subsidy Cash Sought

With most broadband providers extending their FCC pledges to help keep low-income residents connected as the pandemic continues, NCTA is looking for help with more subsidy money.

“The current COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the fact that the current Lifeline program is not optimal for the task of enabling low-income consumers to obtain the type of broadband services that would enable them to work and learn from home,” it told the FCC.

NCTA suggested an “emergency” broadband program needs to be created and said the FCC should make it easier for “companies that already have programs focused on low-income customers” to apply for such a fund. That would be the hundreds of ISPs who have promised the FCC to continue to provide subsidized service to a swelling, pandemic-spurred, low-income population.

Absent that, the association said, “some companies may choose not to participate in this important program because of the upfront costs and delay associated with switching to a new qualification and validation process.”

NCTA said that given how much money that might be, without offering an estimate, Congress will probably need to be involved. 

The Parents Television Council was underwhelmed by the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board's first-ever annual report and renewed its call for disbanding the board.

The FCC reviewed the TV ratings, which the monitoring board oversees, and in a report to Congress last May said the board had not been sufficiently accessible or transparent, but that there is not enough evidence to conclude the ratings were inaccurate, but chiefly because the FCC did not have enough time to make that determination and meet its congressional deadline (90 days to do produce the report).

Related: PTC Calls for Reconstituting Content Ratings Board

The board is currently headed by Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association (board leadership rotates among the head of NCTA, the National Association of Broadcasters and the Motion Picture Association of America).

In a letter to Powell, PTC president Tim Winter thanked him for sending a copy of the report, and said he shared Powell's appreciation of their continuing dialogue on the issue. But in Winter's latest end of that dialog, he took issue with that work product.

"While I appreciate whatever volume of effort that went into the Report’s production, I am profoundly disappointed by the woefully inadequate output," Winter wrote. "If the objective was to produce a report, then you succeeded; but if the objective was to help parents to be better parents, then sadly you’ve failed."

Winter ticked off the reasons for his displeasure, which were many.

First, he said the board's efforts to date--redesigned logo and Web site ("that most Americans have never heard of, and reconnected a phone line that nobody knows exists," said Winter), a single podcast, a press release about the annual report, and more "hollow talking points," were hardly ta "material improvement," nor were "spot checks conducted by industry employees to confirm the accuracy of industry opinion."

In addition to disbanding the board and reconstituting ratings oversight among children's advocates and educators as well as industry officials--there is PTA representation on the current board, which Winter acknowledges--PTC and Winter want Congress to convene a hearing with "pediatricians, children’s mental health experts, and child/family advocates" to review the age-based ratings "to ensure that each rating category definition accurately and effectively reflects contemporary knowledge and international best practices."

Citing a 2018 survey, Powell said in the preamble to the annual report that: "90 percent of parents are aware of the TV ratings system; nearly 95 percent of parents are satisfied with the accuracy of ratings for TV shows. Approximately 88 percent of parents find the TV ratings system helpful; three in four parents report using the TV ratings often or sometimes; and more than 75 percent of parents maintain a favorable opinion about the TV ratings system."

It was rush hour inside the Beltway as stakeholders rushed to comment on the FCC's unanimous vote at its public meeting Thursday (Dec. 12) to propose reallocating some vehicle-to-vehicle communications spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for unlicensed WiFi for 5G and IoT.

The FCC is freeing up 45 MHz for WiFi, a big priority for cable broadband operators and their network of hotspots, while leaving a separate 30 MHz for V2V communications.

Statement of Michael Powell, president & CEO, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association on the FCC’s 5.9 GHz Spectrum Band Vote:

“Today’s unanimous pro-consumer action by the Commission proposing to designate a portion of the 5.9 GHz spectrum band for unlicensed use is an important step toward ensuring that America’s WiFi networks are able to unleash gigabit speeds and keep up with the tremendous consumer demand for connectivity at home and on the go," said Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association. "This item demonstrates the FCC’s commitment to a balanced spectrum policy which will facilitate the deployment of next-generation networks, and recognizes the massive economic benefit of unlicensed spectrum."

“Today, the Federal Communications Commission took an important step towards addressing the growing need for unlicensed spectrum for WiFi® use," said the WiFi Alliance. WiFi Alliance thanks the Commission for its proposal to repurpose the lower 45 megahertz of the 5.9 GHz band to help support high-throughput broadband applications such as WiFi. We look forward to reviewing this 5.9 GHz Band proposal in detail, and continuing to support the Commission in this and other initiatives that will deliver necessary mid-band spectrum to preserve WiFi connectivity for millions of Americans.”

The 5G Automotive Association also saw the move as driving innovation. "Extensive crash avoidance testing continues to demonstrate that C-V2X [Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything] technology will deliver safety benefits to the American public. We look forward to working with all stakeholders to ensure spectrum regulations adequately address the needs of transportation safety and facilitate America’s global competitiveness in connected and autonomous vehicle technology.”

“Charter applauds chairman Pai and the FCC for moving forward with an NPRM on 5.9 GHz and appreciates commissioners O’Rielly and Rosenworcel’s longstanding commitment to opening this band for unlicensed use," said the cable broadband operator. "By making a portion of this highly-valuable band available for unlicensed use after decades of under-utilization, today’s action sets the stage for innovations like ultra-fast, high capacity, multigigabit WiFi that will power connected classrooms, smart homes and remote healthcare for the benefit of consumers.” 

Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, joined the rush to praise the item.

“Opening a portion of the unused transportation band for next-generation WiFi marks a significant win for consumers," Calabrese said. "By opening the lower portion of the 5.9 GHz band for unlicensed public use, the FCC is paving the way for gigabit-fast and more affordable WiFi and 5G-capable services in homes and businesses across the country."

“Expanding the unlicensed bands that power WiFi is an essential part of a truly robust 5G wireless ecosystem. WiFi already generates hundreds of billions of dollars for the U.S. economy each year as it’s become the primary way that consumers and business access data on mobile devices. High-capacity WiFi is also increasingly essential to schools, libraries, and other community anchor institutions. This proposal is also a win for consumers because it promotes a new generation of auto safety communications that promises to be integrated with 5G networks.”

"Comcast applauds the FCC’s unanimous vote proposing to permit unlicensed services in part of the 5.9 GHz band," said Tony Werner, president of Technology, Product, Xperience 9TPX) at Comcast Cable. "As we continue to invest in and increase the performance of our gigabit broadband networks, the FCC’s decision to make the 5.9 GHz band available expeditiously will ensure that the WiFi capacity our customers rely on will continue to match the capabilities of our world-class broadband networks. The strong bipartisan support for this item speaks volumes about the importance of this proceeding. The Commission’s compromise proposal is a major step toward delivering next-generation broadband connectivity and strengthening the foundation for 5G, while clearing the path for modern automotive-safety technologies."

The following is a transcript of NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell's speech on diversity during the 2019 Walter Kaitz Dinner.

We typically speak of diversity with a smile. It is a topic infused with the positive belief that a pluralistic society with an ever-expanding definition of “Us” is a better world.

But diversity and inclusion are also euphemisms. They let us disengage from more painful truths about our society. We openly help the historically disadvantaged but closet away the history that made them disadvantaged in the first place. By that I mean the “barbaric system of slavery” and its lasting aftermath.

This year is the 400th anniversary of slavery in America. The year 1619 was the start of a 250-year run in which black people were not considered humans but instead were merely property that could be bought and sold at will and lawfully beaten, raped and killed.

The New York Times in a must-read series on slavery makes a compelling case that 1619—not 1776—is the true origin of America. If one looks with fresh eyes you will see that every facet of contemporary life in this country is rooted in slavery. As the Times wrote:

“From Slavery grew nearly everything that has made America exceptional—its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, diet and popular music, the inequities of our public health and education, it’s astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as the land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day.”

Our forefathers casting themselves ironically as slaves to the British Crown, declared their independence with these soaring words “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” As these words were inked, 20 percent of the population was in chains. As the Times pointedly said, “we are a nation founded on an ideal and on a lie.”

While the ideals are etched in our monuments and form the vision we try and project to the world, it is the hypocrisy of the lie that America has had to continuously confront—often bitterly and often violently.

There have always been two ways to rectify the lie of our founding ideals. 

The first is to simply write blacks (and women) out of the group of people entitled to equality and God-given rights.

This approach has dominated our history. Slaves were property not people. Freed slaves were a separate and inferior race and not entitled to the benefits of citizenship. Supreme Court law, Read The Ideology of Hate and How to Fight it., David Brooks. https://is.gd/eqDwzl Pseudo-science, politics and religion all seeded and nurtured the toxic myth of racial inferiority.

A myth that underpinned two centuries of laws and public policies designed to keep the descendants of slaves starved of the fruits of American democracy.

There was always a more faithful and humane path to making America a more perfect union. It could eradicate the lie and make “equality for all” the truth. For a brief period after the Civil War, the country experimented with doing just that. Blacks served in Congress, received land, built businesses, and attended universities. But this blossom flowered only briefly, choked by the weeds of Jim Crow laws, fertilized by a belief in white supremacy.

But Black Americans never stopped fighting to be full Americans. A long, bloody struggle led to the 13th and 14th Amendments and groundbreaking civil rights laws. These efforts wrote the playbook later used by women, LGBTQ people, and other groups to win their full rights.

But lies die hard. This country has a long investment in the racial inferiority narrative. Murder in El Paso, white supremacy in Charlottesville, child separation on the border, and chants that “they will not replace us” dims the light and spreads the darkness. Slavery existed for 250 years, but we have only been legally free for 50. Progress is precarious.

Diversity is wonderful. But it is only meaningful if the equality of all people is protected from those who want to go back to living the lie. To be a true diversity warrior requires more than championing the values of pluralism while sitting in air-conditioned offices. It requires we stand.

Stand against the suffocating heat of racism.

Stand against hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community.

Stand against the oppression of women.

And stand for the fundamental equality of all, giving true meaning to our founding ideals.

We have traveled very far from the shores of Point Comfort where the first slave ships landed, and we cannot go back. As black leaders at the time of the Civil War said to those who urged them to go back to where they came from.

“This is our home, and this our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers. ... Here we were born, and here we will die.”

I am proud to be part of an industry that is committed to making America a more perfect union.

Thank you

See Also: Diversity Week Highlights Cable’s Continuing Efforts

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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and association stars were aligning for another run at the STELAR compulsory copyright license bill, the battle over which has divided broadcasters and cable operators for decades.

Congress must revisit the copyright legislation every five years as key provisions come up for sunset or renewal. Cable’s chances of STELAR renewal, which it has pushed, were looking pretty good at press time, though broadcasters were trying to divide and conquer by suggesting good-faith provisions could be de-tethered from the law even as the compulsory license is retained.

STELAR is the latest version of legislation, first passed in 1988, that allows satellite-TV providers to import distant network signals into local markets. The law also requires multichannel video programming distributors, including cable operators, and broadcasters to bargain in good faith in negotiations over retransmission consent for TV stations. The bargaining provisions are what has made the license renewal a flashpoint in the carriage battleground.

Broadcasters and cable operators both want this periodic fight to go away, but by very different routes. Stations want the license eliminated, while MSOs, joined by fair-use supporters often critical of cable, want it to be permanently renewed.

“Given the importance of STELAR to maintaining competition and protecting viewers, Congress should reauthorize it permanently,” Public Knowledge senior counsel John Bergmayer said. “There is no reason for Congress to create artificial crises every few years to ensure that satellite remains a competitor.”

Adding New Meanings to ‘Bad Faith’

Cable operators want to use STELAR (which has had different names at different times) to get rid of retrans blackouts, or at least to stop TV stations from pulling signals during marquee events and forbid bundled deals involving multiple stations or TV signals and other programming. Those conditions should be considered bad-faith bargaining, operators say.

“Broadcasters thumb their noses at Congress and the FCC while jacking up rates on consumers, then brag about it on their quarterly earnings calls,” said Trent Duffy of the American Television Alliance, which includes small and midsized cable operators.

Another sore point with cable operators is when TV stations program a digital subchannel as a network affiliate, allowing that station to control multiple affiliates in a market without running afoul of FCC local ownership limits that apply only to primary signals.

Addressing the subchannel issue would entail Congress beefing up the bargaining rules, since the FCC, under both Democrats and Republicans, has not gone there.

Cable operators, which generally like the government to stay out of the market, argue that tightening the rules is necessary to better level off a playing field that Congress tilted toward broadcasters by imposing the retransmission-consent and must-carry regime in the 1992 Cable Act.

The issue got plenty of new attention as the House and Senate launched hearings into STELAR in particular and the state of the video marketplace in general.

While Republicans signaled it might be OK for the law to go away, they were not of one mind.

The top Democrat on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, set a cable-friendly tone at a June 4 hearing, saying that while STELAR was not perfect, its sunset would create a “crisis” of lost viewership and invite bad behavior and consumer harm.

While cable operators told Congress that escalating retrans fees were hitting consumers hard — both by inflating their cable bills and siphoning off money that would otherwise go to building out rural broadband — broadcasters said that with big tech eating into their local ads, retrans was crucial to supporting all that local, and even life-saving, content legislators agreed was must-have video.

Given the competition for local ads from online platforms, National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith said at a June 5 Senate Commerce Committee hearing that free, over-the-air stations increasingly need retransmission fees. He said the fees are fair value to support stations’ investment in must-have programming — local news, weather and emergency information that legislators conceded are, indeed, must-have.

ACA Connects president and CEO Matt Polka saw it a lot differently. He told Multichannel News, as he has been telling the Hill, that huge broadcast conglomerates would only have a more outsized influence on rising cable bills via rising retrans fees if the law went away and Congress did not put more, not fewer, good faith conditions on negotiations.

NCTA-The Internet & Television Association president Michael Powell said STELAR was all about retaining the FCC as a backstop to retrans bargaining.

In any event, Doyle signaled STELAR was not likely to be relegated to the dustbin of history just yet. He said at the House hearing that though he agreed the license and bargaining components were hardly a perfect solution, allowing them to sunset would result in a “crisis,” of lost viewership and invite bad behavior and consumer harm.

Like cable operators, legislators were remiss to let the “good-faith” directive lapse.

The STELAR license and good-faith bargaining provisions have to either stay or go by the end of the year (or close to it), so Congress has a deadline to drive those key issues to some kind of resolution.

Broadcasters are going into this week’s NAB Show in Las Vegas allied with cable operators on some issues but at odds over a number of other key ones, a love-hate relationship that mirrors the historic tensions between competing services that have needed each other.

In an interview with C-SPAN’s The Communicators series on another topic (the tension between internet-service providers and edge providers), NCTA–The Internet & Television Association president and CEO Michael Powell pointed out that the relationship between different parts of the communications ecosystem is, well, complicated.

In a converged market, he said, everyone is both a competitor and a collaborator, so the stovepipe model of walled-off services has given way to a frenemies model.

That holds true with broadcasting and cable, which are clearly co-dependent, given that broadcasters have must-have content for cable platforms and cable now is how most people receive their local stations, so it delivers the lion’s share of audience for that ad-driven service.

Friends Sneak Up on You

“You can’t hold a grudge very long,” Powell said, for “tomorrow we may have to be friends.” Or even today.

On the frenemies front, there is the debate over how to repurpose some of C-band satellite spectrum and even some fringe elements of must-carry and retransmission-consent regulations to agree on, though elsewhere on that front cable operators and broadcasters are battling big time.

As for the C-band, broadcasters and cable operators are on the same page when it comes to baseline protections for that key satellite spectrum.

The C-band is currently used for satellite delivery of cable and broadcast network programming to cable headends and television and radio stations. The FCC wants to open that spectrum up to wireless broadband to help close the digital divide and promote 5G, both prime directives, so cable operators and broadcasters are on the same page when it comes to ensuring they are protected in the rush to 5G.

Cable operators are calling on the FCC to make sure incumbent services are protected in the commission’s effort to open up more spectrum for wireless broadband.

In comments on the FCC’s plan, NCTA said it needs to get more data about how those incumbent services are protected before it makes any final decision about modifying the band. That’s because such disruption could “significantly disrupt the television content distribution ecosystem to the detriment of more than 100 million U.S. television households.”

ACA Connects (formerly the American Cable Association) told the FCC that while it supports more efficient and flexible use of the C-band spectrum, if the FCC does not protect incumbent users there could be an outsized effect on smaller operators in rural areas where fiber is not an option.

Broadcasters’ concerns track pretty closely.

The National Association of Broadcasters told the FCC, “If, in its haste to slip on a pair of running shoes the commission focuses only on reallocating as much spectrum as possible, it could inadvertently stifle consumer benefits.” For broadcasters, those potential benefits include the move to 4K quality broadcasts made possible by the migration to the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard.

But the new standard is one of those areas where broadcasters and cable operators diverge.

NCTA, ACA Connects and the American TV Alliance all have issues with the FCC’s initial order laying out the framework for the ATSC 3.0 rollout, including what cable MSOs saw as a vague simulcast requirement. The NAB wants a flexible standard for waivers of the FCC’s requirement that TV stations’ current ATSC 1.0 transmission and next-generation ATSC 3.0 signal be simulcast.

The FCC is refereeing that one and should have a decision soon, chairman Ajit Pai has signaled.

What to do about retrans and must-carry, if anything, is arguably the biggest digital divide between cable and broadcast.

The NAB and NCTA actually came together on a compromise proposal to streamline must-carry/retrans elections, which was to allow for email rather than snail-mail elections. While that will save a few trees, the forest remains contested ground. Broadcasters are fighting to maintain the status quo of mandatory carriage and the ability to leverage retrans blackouts, but cable operators say that is a government thumb on the scale that needs to come off.

Star-Crossed STELAR

The NAB is fighting an uphill battle to get Congress to sunset the compulsory license that allows satellite operators to deliver distant signals to local markets that lack a network affiliate, or in a handful of the smallest markets where DirecTV chooses not to carry any at all.

The Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELAR) legislation that authorizes the distant-signal compulsory license expires every five years, unless reauthorized by Congress. STELAR also provides a carve-out from retransmission-consent rules for those distant signals and requires that retrans negotiations be in good faith.

Meanwhile, cable operators are pushing just as hard for renewal because they are hoping the legislation will be a vehicle for retrans reforms, as it was last time around, including renewing the FCC’s enforcement of good-faith retrans negotiations and extending the agency’s prohibition on coordinated retrans negotiations among non-commonly owned TV stations in a market to all stations from just the top four in the market.

Cable operators are hoping to add third-party arbitration and a ban on blackouts to that list of reforms.

ATLANTA -- Those weary of the wireless industry’s hype around 5G found a welcome opening general session at the SCTE’s annual Cable-Tec Expo show Tuesday.

The hits started with Cox Communications technology chief Kevin Hart, delivering a mild tongue-in-cheek remark during his general session intro: “You know 5G is going to be great, because it’s got 25% more G,” Hart quipped.

NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell, appearing in the session’s keynote panel, was a little more blunt: “You know what the wireless guys like most? Wireline networks,” he said, remarking on 5G’s need for backhaul and other services typically provided by HFC network operators.

Powell also said, “5G is 25% technology, 75% marketing,” dismissing the technology to little more than the wireless industry’s “latest widget.”

Appearing in the general session panel alongside Powell, CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney compared 5G to Teligent, the late-‘90s-era fixed wireless company he formerly served as CIO for before joining HP. He recalled the challenges of trying to establish point-to-point communications technologies in big cities and around phenomena including trees and fog.

“I think 5G is going to have similar issues,” McKinney said.

The cable industry org chiefs made these remarks as wireless industry companies, including Verizon, market 5G fixed wireless services as replacements for cable broadband.

Masters of cable

The featuring of Powell and McKinney, along with Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers President and CEO Mark Dzuban, on Tuesday’s opening panel session was symbolic of the SCTE’s new center-of-gravity juxtaposition in an industry trade-show universe that no longer includes the erstwhile Cable Show.

According to Dzuban, collaboration between the trio’s respective organizations is more robust than ever. “We have a good relationship spanning ideation and deployment,” he said, describing the synergy between CableLabs’ R&D capabilities, SCTE’s real-world application acumen and the NCTA’s policy-making chops.

“You could do a Venn diagram on how we overlap,” added the session's moderator, Comcast technology chief Tony Werner. “And when we get it right, it’s very powerful.”

For his part, Powell used the well-attended morning session at the Georgia World Congress to hammer home lobbying points: the cable industry doesn’t get enough credit from a policy-making perspective. Oh, and California is way out on a limb in terms of net neutrality legislation.

From a national policy-making perspective, Powell said he’s concerned that the cable industry is getting “left behind in the nation’s optimistic narrative of the future,” the fixation overly applied to tech companies like Google, Facebook and Apple.

“No other industry has been as reliably consistent in doing what it says it’s going to do, deploying what it says it’s going to deploy, as this one,” Powell said, drawing applause.

Powell wondered aloud if the cable industry is perhaps too humble in not more loudly tub thumping its own innovations, like the emerging Full Duplex DOCSIS standard that will ultimately deliver 10 Gbps symmetrical broadband.

Perhaps offering cable engineers with marketing responsibilities an idea, Powell referred to this new tech as the cable industry’s “10G” standard.

He also described the NCTA as “at war” with California over its recently enacted state net neutrality legislation.

Tuesday’s session was closed by Cox president Pat Esser, who said his privately owned cable company will spend $10 billion over the next five years on network infrastructure investments. 

The Walter Kaitz Foundation’s 35 Annual Kaitz Dinner in New York raised more than $1.4 million Wednesday night to help foster diversity programs throughout the cable industry.

The funds will go to help four organizations supported by Kaitz – The T. Howard Foundation, The Emma L. Bowen Foundation, The National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) -- serve as a catalyst to increase diversity in the workforce, in industry programs and in programming.

The dinner, held at the New York Marriott Marquis on Oct. 17, honored TV One as the 2018 Diversity Champion, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America as Diversity Advocate.

“We were determined to shake up the television landscape and we did,” TV One founder and CEO Alfred Liggins said in accepting the Diversity Champion award. “TV One has delivered a unique and authentic voice to African American viewers.”

Boys & Girls Clubs of America CEO Jim Clark said that the organization is a critical resource across the country, providing a safe, inclusive environment for young men and women.

“When you visit a Boys & Girls Club, you are likely to meet children from diverse backgrounds and circumstances,” Clark said. “…At Boys & Girls Clubs, we believe every kid has what it takes.”

NCTA-The Internet & Television Association CEO Michael Powell took that a step further, adding in his speech that in today’s era of identity politics and anti-intellectualism, it is more important than ever to ensure that diverse voices are heard.

“A commitment to multi-cultural democracy, integrated schools and a diverse workplace is not a social justice course at Yale or politically correct beliefs,” Powell said. “It is the only aspiration that embraces a vision of social government and the economy that includes all of us.”

And he stressed that it is up to businesses to lead the diversity charge.

“Anti-intellectualism is dangerous because it serves as a subtle sickle for cutting down the rising prospects of the poor, the middle class aspirations of blacks and Latinos, and the glass ceiling smashing goals of young girls,” Powell said. “This is why we desperately need corporate America to remain resolutely committed to multicultural work forces where merit still counts for not just something, for everything. We need business leaders who pride talent, skill and expertise and we need professional environments where facts remain arbiters of truth and where knowledge is celebrated.

“Many industries do fail at diversity, despite their self interest, but our industry is not one of them,” Powell continued. “We do not shrink from our commitment to diversity. Our industry recognizes that its own prosperity depends on inclusion and maybe more importantly, it fundamentally understands the future prospects of America depend on it as well.”

Kaitz Foundation executive director Michelle Ray praised her predecessor David Porter as well as other diversity-focused organizations like NAMIC and WICT, for moving diversity initiatives forward across the industry

“We’re really here because diversity maters,” Way said. “It has mattered for the last 35 years and it will always matter. The evidence of this is reflected back in the faces and the stories of those whose lives and careers have been impacted by the industry’s unwavering commitment to these ideals.”

The Dinner was co-chaired by Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson and AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan.  The next dinner will be held on Sept. 18, 2019.

WASHINGTON — Cable internet service providers’ drumbeat for equal regulatory scrutiny for the edge continues to be fueled by the business practices of Facebook, that single poster company, whose reputation appears to be suffering despite a mea culpa ad campaign admitting problems and promising change.

Facebook stock was down last week on reports that the Federal Trade Commission investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data sharing fiasco had widened to include the FBI, the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission (with Cambridge Analytica having shared some data with President Donald Trump’s election campaign).

Consumer Reports joined with other groups last week to ask the FTC to open yet another investigation into the social media giant, in this case regarding its privacy controls, which they said “nudge” users toward maximum data collection.

Facebook is already being investigated by the FTC over whether the Cambridge Analytica sharing constituted a breach of a 2011 consent decree. Facebook has said it believes it has remained within the four corners of that decree.

NCTA–The Internet & Television Association president and CEO Michael Powell has been pushing Washington policymakers and others to start looking at edge providers, including Facebook, when they talk about powerful media companies and their potential harmful impacts. The knock has long been primarily reserved for ISPs, but that appears to be the case no longer.

CR headed up a study of Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica third-party data sharing fiasco that led to congressional hearings and increased scrutiny. It said the study found “privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of control, hiding away privacy-friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices and choice architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires more effort for the users.”

Facebook’s business model relies on monetizing user data through targeted advertising.

Web Founder Piles On

Facebook was also getting some tough love from the founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, who told Vanity Fair last week that the power of online platforms and their hijacking by bad actors had “failed humanity” and produced “with no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform, a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.”

Berners-Lee is working on a new platform that will attempt to decentralize control of user data from the Facebooks, Amazons and Googles of the world.

Elsewhere on the Facebook front, a large majority of respondents to a new poll said they don’t trust Facebook with their personal data.

Asked for their impressions of the site, 63% of those polled said they “do not trust Facebook to obey the law when it comes to protecting their personal information.” If the FTC came to the same conclusion, it could levy hefty fines for violation of the consent decree. The margin of error of the survey was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. For its part, Facebook’s margin for error in D.C. for protecting user information appears to be narrowing considerably.

Pictured, top: NCTA chief Michael Powell speaks at the Near Future conference in 2017.

Joanna McIntosh, executive vice president for global policy and external affairs at the Motion Picture Association of America, is joining NCTA: The Internet & Television Association as senior vice president of government affairs, starting in September.

McIntosh will report to NCTA president Michael Powell. Her resume includes stints in government relations at Verizon and posts at AT&T and the Markle Foundation.

In addition, Cliff Riccio, NCTA vice president and senior legislative strategist, has been named deputy of the government relations department.

“I’m thrilled to have such a well-regarded and expert advocate as Joanna join NCTA,” Powell said in a statement. “Her extensive experience and knowledge of the issues that are critical to this industry and the American economy, and will help ensure that we remain an effective and constructive voice in Washington, D.C. I’m equally excited to have Cliff take on a bigger leadership role at NCTA. Joanna and Cliff will be a great leadership team.”

The National Archives Foundation of the National Archives and Records Administration has elected Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, to its board of directors.

The foundation is looking to tap into Powell's communication experience to help spread the word about, and engage the public in, its exhibitions, public programs and educational initiatives, which is the nonprofit foundation's mission.

"Michael’s deep experience in the telecommunications industry and federal government [Powell is former chairman of the FCC]...will contribute to our ongoing effort to develop exhibitions, public programs and educational initiatives that allow us to share the treasures of the National Archives with a wider audience,” A’Lelia Bundles, board chair and president, said.

“I am honored to join those entrusted with preserving our nation’s most sacred documents, and ensuring our past remains a living history,” Powell said.

Washington was waking up Wednesday (June 14) to the not-unexpected news that President Donald Trump intended to nominate Jessica Rosenworcel to fill the empty Democratic seat on the FCC.

The White House announced the intention -- it does not become official until it is sent to the Senate -- late Tuesday night.

“I congratulate Jessica Rosenworcel on the announcement that President Trump will nominate her to serve another term on the Federal Communications Commission," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. "She has a distinguished record of public service, including the four-and-a-half years we worked together at this agency, and I look forward to working with her once again to advance the public interest.”

“Hallelujah, better late than never,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), ranking member of the Commerce Committee and a big Rosenworcel fan. “The Senate should now move quickly to confirm her and fulfil the promise that was made two years ago.”

“I congratulate Jessica Rosenworcel on the announcement that the President intends to nominate her to return as a Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission," said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. "Jessica has been a tireless advocate for bridging the 'homework gap,' a leader in the effort to modernize our 9-1-1 call centers, and a champion for freeing up more unlicensed spectrum. I look forward to working with her in the fight for an open internet, affordable broadband and strong consumer privacy protections."


Related: Rosenworcel Could Get New Lease on FCC Life

“We congratulate Jessica Rosenworcel on the news that she will be renominated as FCC commissioner and look forward to welcoming her back to the Commission," said NCTA–The Internet & Television Association president Michael Powell, himself a former commissioner and chairman. "During her first term as commissioner, Jessica proved to be an outstanding public servant who championed policies that enable American consumers to benefit from the tremendous changes taking place in the communications and technology marketplace.

"We share Jessica’s passion for promoting policies that close the digital divide and ensure that all Americans, especially students, have access to the many benefits that the internet offers,” Powell added.

"NAB is delighted to hear that President Trump will renominate Jessica Rosenworcel to the FCC," said NAB president Gordon Smith. "Commissioner Rosenworcel is supremely qualified for another FCC term, having demonstrated her public service credentials and full command of telecommunications issues during her commission tenure. NAB strongly supports her renomination and confirmation."

“We congratulate Jessica Rosenworcel and look forward to working closely to promote competition and fairness to all Americans," said Public Knowledge President Gene Kimmelman. "At a time when we face enormous challenges to prevent the FCC from undermining fundamental consumer protections, we are pleased that Senate Minority Leader Schumer and his colleagues indicate a commitment to fight for competition, protecting consumers’ pocketbooks and consumers’ rights by promoting nominees who will support our cause.”

“AT&T is pleased that President Trump took action to ensure that the FCC will once again benefit from Jessica Rosenworcel’s considerable intellect," said AT&T senior EVP Bob Quinn. "Her service as Commission Staff, Congressional Staff and FCC Commissioner provides a depth of experience and expertise rarely matched that will serve her well as she continues to be a leading voice on communications policy.”

“We are thrilled at the prospect of having Commissioner Rosenworcel back at the FCC,” said Heather Burnett Gold, president of the Fiber Broadband Association. “If she is confirmed, we look forward to her continued support of fiber networks and the benefits that fiber brings to American families, businesses, and communities.”

“CTIA and the wireless industry fully support Jessica Rosenworcel’s nomination as an FCC Commissioner, and look forward to her swift confirmation so she can return to the agency," said CTIA President Meredith Attwell Baker. "She is a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated strong leadership and a keen understanding of the need for a modern spectrum policy, as well as promoting policies to help speed the deployment of broadband networks for American consumers and business.”

“Benton is happy to hear that Jessica Rosenworcel could return to the Federal Communications Commission," said Benton Foundation executive director Adrianne Furniss. "As a commissioner, Rosenworcel was a leader on a number of issues. She worked to give new meaning to the FCC’s public safety mandate in the Digital Age. She helped modernize the E-rate program to ensure that all students have access to the latest education tools made possible by fast, affordable broadband. She recognized that those students also need reliable, robust broadband access at home so they can complete school assignments. Rosenworcel’s experience and leadership make her an ideal candidate to help shape the future of telecommunication policy.”

"We welcome Commissioner Rosenworcel's return to the FCC," said Free Press' Craig Aaron. "She is one of the most knowledgeable commissioners ever to serve at the agency. She has a strong record of standing up for the public interest and ensuring the FCC has the legal authority it needs to stand up to the powerful industries it is supposed to monitor. We hope this renomination means the political games around her appointment are over and that she will soon be back at the commission to resist the efforts of Chairman Pai to dismantle so many of her major accomplishments."

“I appreciate the president announcing his intent to nominate my friend, former Commissioner Rosenworcel, for a new term at the Commission," said FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly. "If the Senate confirms her nomination, she will bring her expertise, insight and thoughtfulness to communications issues. I look forward to the prospect of returning to work with her on these matters.”

Michael Powell, president of NCTA: The Internet and Television Association, says that while churn is inevitable, doom and gloom scenarios are not. "As long as Internet is the foundation of all of the opportunities and choices, that still provides a pretty powerful place for cable in the home."

Powell was being interviewed for the series The Communicators on C-SPAN, which is a public service backed by cable operators nationwide.

He signaled that the new FCC chairman was a visionary in that he sees the need for light-touch regulations, and for treating both networks and edge providers as important to the Internet ecosystems virtuous cycle of investment and innovation.

Powell covered a range of topics, including net neutrality and the impact of a new administration and FCC chairman. Powell is a former Republican chairman himself.

Asked by interviewer Lydia Beyoud, Bloomberg BNA tech & telecom reporter, what the change would mean, Powell said he was a Pai fan. Given that Pai spent several years at the FCC -- he has been both a staffer and commissioner -- Powell said he understands the institution and the issues. "There is not a long learning curve," he said, which means things can happen pretty quickly.

Pai has been busy undoing some of FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's late-term actions, including the issuance of reports and decisions.

Powell said Pai was more the norm than the exception among recent chairmen. "He is more in line with most chairmen of the last 20 years," he said, by which he said he meant he has a "very committed understanding that both infrastructure and edge providers are of equal importance to what we call the Internet ecosystem."

He called that being reasserted "valuable." Chairman Wheeler focused on ISPs as the gatekeepers, saying that while folks had choices not to use edge providers, they had little choice in ISPs.

Powell said that innovation is critical to networks, not just edge providers, and signaled he thought Pai got that.

He called Pai a visionary, that vision being of a light-touch approach that was lacking in his Democratic predecessor. He called that understanding that the market moves at lightning speed and that there is a "huge amount" of futility in some regulatory proceedings because by the time they wrap up, the market has moved because businesses can't sit on their decisions waiting for regulators.

Asked if there is a way to de-politicize the issue of network neutrality in a town where partisanship is the current political currency, he said that on way would be to divide the Open Internet order decision under Wheeler into two parts. He said there was essentially no division on one part -- preserving an open Internet. But the other decision was more accurately described as a power grab in reclassifying ISPs as common carriers, which gave the FCC "unbounded authority to regulate the Internet in ways they hadn't before."

Powell said that second part is both highly controversial and highly unnecessary and that the problem comes in conflating the two. 

He said NCTA's advocacy for net neutrality protections has been "unflinching" over the years. As chairman, Powell enshrined network neutrality principles, but stopped short of making them bright-line rules, which squared with his philosophy of not trying to encase technological quicksilver in regulatory cement.

He said the only thing NCTA threw a "hissy fit" about was Title II and changing 20 years of bipartisan policy to regulate the Internet using, which he called the decision that led to the "hottest" part of that controversy.

He said that if the nation wants infrastructure to increase, rural America to get "less uneconomical" to serve and for 5G to be successful, then use regulatory models that incent that, not applying common carrier regs, which he said were a mistake, are a mistake, and will be if not corrected.

He pointed out that he was both the chairman that talked about those Internet freedom principles--and did something about them in his statement of consumer rights--but also the chairman who classified Internet service as an information service. "That was the compact. The Internet/ISP community would be lightly regulated in order to incent them to move from their traditional infrastructures to this new one...but that they had to stay cognizant of the critical importance of openness to the consumer."

Powell said blocking and throttling have never been a compelling strategy not just because his members are good hearted but because it also makes the most economic sense. It is hostile to  your customers," he said. "You are better off serving them with a high-quality, high-throughput structure."

Powell, a former Republican FCC chairman, said he was as surprised as anyone by the results of the Presidential election and signaled that the D.C. insiders were as surprised as the public at large. He said based on political consultants and late-night calls about the election had led him to believe it was "going in a different direction."

But he said he has been through lots of Presidents and that while, NCTA may have anticipated preparing for one political environment, it was not very hard to shift gears to preparing "for a very different one," one he said holds opportunities for the industry.

The Communicators episode airs at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 11, on C-SPAN and Monday, March 13, on C-SPAN2 at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The 2016 Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame has been set for Oct. 18 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

Honorees named to the 26th annual class include cable industry executives Michael Powell, president and CEO, National Cable & Telecommunications Association; Kevin Reilly, president, TBS and TNT, and chief creative officer, Turner Entertainment; and Jeff Wachtel, chief content officer, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, and president, Universal Cable Productions & Wilshire Studios. Additionally, Turner Network Television’s Inside the NBA will be honored. 

From elsewhere across the TV industry, the other honorees include Robert Kraft, founder, chairman and CEO of The Kraft Group and owner of the New England Patriots, who will receive the Chairman's Award; Monica Gadsby, CEO, Latin America, Publicis One; The CW President Mark Pedowitz; Peter Liguori, CEO and president of Tribune Media; Deborah Norville, anchor of Inside Edition, CBS Syndication; Stuart Sucherman, chairman, Sucherman Group; Jay Sures, managing director, United Talent Agency; Keith Turner, president, advertising sales & marketing, Univision Communications Inc. 

Related: NYC Television & Video Week Returns Oct. 17-20, 2016

“Each year the Hall of Fame gala continues to grow bigger and more exciting,” said Bill McGorry, chairman of the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame. “It is an honor to add these industry leaders to the prestigious group of inductees we have recognized in our long and storied history.”

“The broadcast industry is led by extraordinarily talented builders and visionaries,” added Louis Hillelson, VP/group publisher, Broadcasting & Cable. “It is a privilege to recognize these honorees and we look forward to celebrating with them this October.” 

Broadcasting & Cable is a sister publication to Multichannel News.

For more on the Hall of Fame, which is part of NewBay Media's NYC Television and Video Week, go to bchalloffame.com.

A portion of the net proceeds go to the Broadcasters Foundation of America and The Paley Center for Media.

WASHINGTON — In an interview for the technology website CNET, National Cable & Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell said he has issues with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's style of campaign, though he signaled that applies to the divisive tone of politics in general, one that is discouraging good people from running for high office.

In the interview, Powell was asked about the race given that he comes from a prominent Republican family whose pater familias, Colin Powell, has himself been urged to run for president in the past.

Powell, a Republican who was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission by President Clinton and served as chairman under President George W. Bush, said was not making it personal to the New York-based businessman. But he said that given how he was raised to believe in civility and fighting with ideas, he said he has “a lot of difficulty with how [Trump] has styled his candidacy.”

“I have a deep belief that your client is the American people, not yourself or a party or anything else,” Powell told CNET. “I believe in a society that will only thrive through inclusion, not division. And I think leadership is about trying to connect the better nature of people and not profit from the worst nature in people.”

Powell said he did not know why his father doesn't run, other than at the moment the system is not encouraging people like him.

“We should be worried as a country that a Colin Powell or [former defense secretary] Bob Gates or a lot of other people I admire don’t want anything to do with this. If you have a system that elects the most powerful person in the world that people are being repelled by, something is wrong.”

“I won’t just make that comment [profiting from the worst in people] about Mr. Trump,” Powell said. “The political system is letting us all down. Somebody once told me that the way most people vote for president is they want the person who exhibits the qualities that they wish they fully were. You should want them to be better.”

The U.S. court of Appeals has still not come out with a ruling on ISP challenges, including from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, to the FCC’s Open Internet order. Some court watchers say there is a good chance that it could disallow applying the new rules to wireless broadband, but leave them on wired. That could mean a different set of rules and expectations for  wired and wireless, for wireless and WiFi, and for wireless or wired and edge providers.

In a recent interview session (see "Powell Pushes Back," subscription required), Multichannel News asked NCTA president Michael Powell how that bifurcated regulatory regime would affect his members.

MCN: If the FCC overturns the wireless portion of the Open Internet order, how does that impact the future of wired broadband if you are still under Title II?

Michael Powell: Let’s instead take the perspective of not what it does to us but what it does to the country and its policies. In a very, very sort of juggler-like way, the commission put together an almost Rube Goldberg set of choices. It overruled tons of existing communications precedents. It extended regulation to several sectors of the ecosystem that had never been regulated before. It tried to achieve massive forbearance in order to defuse the most onerous parts of the regime that IT was imposing, regulating portions of the network that have never been regulated before.

And what we were promised is that this thing would hold together in some kind of coherent, well-integrated regime that would be fair to all participants and somehow achieve the open network goal. OK. To me if that result takes place, the commission will try to crow that it won. I would argue that it loses if it loses any piece of this. It loses because you have now created a destabilized marketplace where different sets of rules apply for infrastructures providing the same or similar services.

Let’s go back to privacy. So, we’re going to have a world in which the privacy rules will be different for fixed broadband and wireless broadband, which would no longer be covered. And different for edge providers. That is three different privacy regimes for people who are all out there competing in the same services. That cannot be the direction people want to see. So, I think it is like a Jenga puzzle with pieces knocked out of the tower that we didn’t get the comprehensive thing that we were pledged, And I think you will distort and disadvantage markets. 

Much has been said about how Verizon is seeming to be drifting away from the fixed market to the wireless market and the Web edge world by their own seeming admission. I think they are partly being moved that way because of this regulatory structure. We are losing a very effective fixed wire competitor who has found regulatory grass greener on the other side of the fence. I’m willing to say that if they get wireless outside of net neutrality, that will only hasten that migration. 

Is that better for consumers that FiOS and fixed product is less significant, less invested in and even going away? Businesses are funny animals, right. You can hurt them but you don’t generally kill them. Like a chameleon they re-grow an arm and they change color and they will go to where the action is optimal. If we make a regulatory mess of the classification of broadband, I think you will have all kinds of unintended consequences. I think it will become dramatically more wireless centric, even though the commission refuses to count wireless as a broadband substitute. The consumer does and the Pew surveys are showing that consumers are willing to use their wireless phones exclusively and not have any wireline product proves that, I think. 

But the market won’t evolve because it is efficient or because of innovation of because market leadership took it that way. It is going to evolve as a remodel to avoid regulatory onus and find regulatory oxygen. 
And that will be the doing of the architects of this system.

Texas Republican Senator and Majority Whip John Cornyn has problems with the way the FCC's set-top box proposal came down and what role the White House had in that, and other, FCC decisions.

In letters to White House counsel Neil Eggleston and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler this week, Cornyn presumed the White House had been directing the outcome of the proceedings of the FCC, an independent agency, and wanted information about how that was happening.

Cornyn said in the letters, which were identical, that he was troubled by "claims that Administration officials are inappropriately pressuring an independent agency to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

FCC Republicans have raised the same concerns, as has National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell, who told Multichannel News/B&C last month that "calling on the commission to take a specific action with that much specificity really takes advantage of the enormous coercive power of the presidency to put commissioners, particularly those in the President’s party, in a highly uncomfortable and difficult position.."

The President publicly urged the FCC to "unlock" set-top boxes after the FCC voted to propose the move, as he had publicly called for Title II reclassification of ISPs, though that public call came before the FCC pivoted to that position.

Cornyn cited that Title II input from the White House as well, pointing to a Governmental Affairs Committee investigation that concluded, Cornyn said, that the White House "overrode the FCC's normal decisionmaking apparatus in order to engineer an outcome for regulating the Internet."

Cornyn wants all records of communications between the Executive Office of the President and anyone at the FCC on the set-top issue, as well as various other travel records, phone records (including VoIP records), logs and other data, and he wants them by May 26 at the latest.

READ MORE:Powell Pushes Back: Q&A With NCTA Chief on the Eve of INTX [subscription required] | Get more #INTX2016 news.

National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell told an INTX 2016 opening session crowd Monday (May 16) that their industry is under a "relentless regulatory assault" by the FCC of chairman Tom Wheeler.

Citing in particular the FCC's set-top box and broadband CPNI proposals, Powell said the mantra of "competition, competition, competition" are instead the unprovoked hammer blows of "regulation, regulation, regulation."

He said the policy blows the industry is suffering, and would weather successfully, he concluded, are more than just "modest regulatory corrections, instead they are "thundering, tectonic shifts that have crumbled decades of settled law and policy."

Evoking epic battles between dinosaurs, though without the suggestion they were in any danger of  extinction, Powell painted the new online competition as behemoths loose in the land. "There are formidable new creatures roaming our traditional feeding grounds," he said, ones being nurtured by the FCC while cable ISPs get the back of its regulatory hand.

Powell slammed the Wheeler FCC for labeling ISPs as gatekeepers while letting edge providers roam free. He drew applause from the crowd when he said: "It is a mistake to view network providers as an impediment to that growth, rather than a valued ingredient of it."

Powell said the FCC's regulatory attack had been unprovoked, saddling the industry with new regs without evidence of consumer harms.

READ MORE: Our coverage of the FCC's set-top plan

He said that the FCC's set-top box proposal--to mandate program streams and data be made available to third parties--was confiscating their property and turning it over to competitors.

"Instead of unlocking the box, this proposal has unlocked fierce opposition from all quarters, from distributors, content providers, civil rights groups, labor unions and over 150 members of Congress," he said.

Powell said that, and the proposal to potentially regulate the rates of cable business broadband, even though they are new competitive entrants, were examples of what he saw as the "emerging government view" that the marketplace is "bifurcated," with the edge companies "nurtured" and network providers "shackled."

He called that a jaundiced view that will hurt the country's Information Age ambitions.

Powell said that rather than set the two against each other, the better course, and one he said his industry is pursuing, is to make partners, not adversaries, of the edge. "We see a marketplace big enough for all competitors," he said.

Wheeler will be in Boston Wednesday (May 18) to provide his view of the regulatory regime.

The Future of TV Coalition, which includes cable and other ISPs pushing back on the FCC's set-top box unlocking proposal, will host a demonstration of just how many choices cable and satellite subs already have to access content.

That demonstration -- April 13 at NCTA headquarters -- follows FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's appearance as a witness before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, where he said that 99% of cable and satellite subs don't have choices," the coalition pointed out in announcing the event.

NCTA president and former FCC chairman Michael Powell has not been shy about criticizing current FCC chairman and former NCTA president Wheeler's proposal to make set-top data and programming streams available to third-party box and app developers as a way to promote his mantra of "competition, competition, competition."

The coalition's argument is that that competition is "already there, already there, already there."

Powell has said the proposal is, at its base, government assistance to one set of big tech interests to get access to the intellectual property of others and monetize it without the obligation to negotiate terms, share in data collection or generate revenue from the content created by others.

Wheeler's response to such arguments was, literally, "balderdash" (also to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee).

The "interplay" of three pending FCC issues -- the "unlocked" set-top box proposal, privacy rules and "the ultimate resolution of  net neutrality -- is impeding cable industry development and improperly putting "a government imprimatur on the notion of competition," NCTA president/CEO Michael Powell said March 23 at the Free State Foundation’s Eighth Annual Telecom Policy Conference.

Expanding his criticism of several FCC initiatives, Powell cited the agency's "biases [towards] the development of tech companies" that "makes it possible for tech companies to invade our traditional areas" but prohibits cable firms from moving in  their direction. 

He singled out the recent privacy proposal that would affect Internet Service Providers (including cable operators) in different ways than it would impact content or application suppliers.

"Privacy is not controversial; it is the hypocritical inconsistency that is controversial," Powell said.  "You cannot describe that data collection and monetization is the justification for this level of rules while ignoring the fact that [similar actions] take place on every other platform that consumers use."

Powell challenged the FCC to find a way to differentiate "between the value of privacy and personalization" without taking a heavy-handed approach.

He also slammed the set-top box proceeding, saying that it "perfectly encapsulates government intervention."

"You cannot find one soul who doesn't recognize that there is no market that is shifting more than video delivery," Powell emphasized.  He said cable has lost 50% of its market share to new entrants, referring to telco TV and over-the-top operators. "This market is on fire."  He called the FCC's STB plan a "rent transfer" decision and an "unrestrained violation" of its role.

"All costs will be borne by customers," Powell said. He pointed out that the proposal will take at least five years to implement, "by which time the market will have changed."  The commission should not "pick winners and losers," Powell said.

His criticisms came during a panel of association executives discussing "Hot-Topic Communications Issues," part of a day-long program that included FCC commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Mignon Clyburn plus Federal Trade Commission member Maureen Ohlhausen. FSF's intent was to explore "the FCC and the rule of law," although many of the speakers focused on perceived abuses of power.

Even FCC general counsel Jonathan Sallet, in a conversation with FSF president Randolph May that was centered on procedural processes at the commission, conceded that "more direct conversations between commissioners would be a very helpful step."  Sallet, who recommended changes to sunshine laws "so that commissioners can deliberate," acknowledged that the FCC could use more input on many topics it is reviewing.

"Sometimes we know issues are in flux and we need to know more," he said.

Right-leaning FSF's agenda began with politicized rhetoric when keynoter Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)  lambasted the FCC and singled out chairman Tom Wheeler as "a bull in a china shop."  Blackburn, vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a member of its Communications and Technology Subcommittee, characterized the FCC staff as having "failed to exercise regulatory humility," citing its recent effort to oversee privacy, which she said is the FTC's responsibility.

"The FCC does not have the necessary expertise to oversee privacy," she said.  "It is arguing for a solution that is one-sided and focused only on one part of the Internet ecosystem."  

Blackburn also plowed into the issues of unlocked set-top boxes and municipal broadband, citing that Memphis "is $27 million in the hole" from its flirtation with such plans, and "the list of failures goes on and on."

"It's the government's job is to create an environment that encourages competition, not to create a system where the government is the competition," she said. "If the state decides to create broadband networks, so be it, but "the FCC has no right" to butt in.

As for the open STB issue -- which she referred to under the old "All-Vid" name -- Blackburn said, "Nashville content creators are absolutely baffled by what the FCC is trying to do." She contended that the FCC plan would encourage theft and could create conflict between FCC policy and business contracts between content producers and carriers.

"It has created a tremendous amount of confusion," Blackburn said.

"The FCC's decision-making has frustrated content makers, the telecom industry and policy makers," she concluded, emphasizing that telecom "has thrived under light-touch regulation."

Diplomatic Commissioners

FSF's May sought to explore possibilities for less politicization and more "collegiality" among FCC commissioners during his "fireside chat" with O'Rielly and Clyburn, with a series of "can't we all just get along" questions.  Both officials initially tried to be cordial.

O'Rielly: "I get along with my colleagues very well. ... I try not to let one issue color my feelings about the next one."

Clyburn: "My compass is serving the public interest. We're not in a vacuum." 

And then they got into specifics, where political polarization quickly emerged.  They disagreed on the STB plan.

"Words have meaning," O'Rielly said about the chairman's perception that software is part of the STB revision. "When Congress wrote 'equipment,' it didn't mean 'software.'"  The direction toward applications and software has nothing to do with the statute and is "problematic," he added.

Clyburn insisted that "Congress envisioned a robust marketplace...whatever the interface is."  She said that the plan is focused on "whether this is a non-competitive marketplace."

Similarly, on the privacy issue, O'Rielly pointed out that "our expertise, the number of people at the FCC working on privacy is small, compared with expertise at the FTC."  Clyburn said she doesn't use the word "duplicate" but rather focuses on "context," considering the two agencies' efforts "complementary."

"We work together to insure that expectations are met," Clyburn said.

And again when discussing the Open Internet situation, she emphasized "flexibility and innovation," while O'Rielly insisted, "You can never have certainty when you have no structure." 

"That's what the chairman created under the 'net neutrality rule," O'Rielly said.

They also sparred over proposals for "lifeline" services.  O'Rielly said he prefers "a hard budget rather than a [percentage] cap," while Clyburn insisted that the plan "removed duplicates, put in discipline and [provided] a lot of accountability."

The panel of association executives, which included (in addition to NCTA's Powell) CTIA president/CEO Meredith Baker; U.S. Telecom Association president/CEO Walter McCormick; NARUC general counsel Brad Ramsay; and Nicol Turner-Lee, VP of the Multicultural, Media, Telecom and Internet Council, continued the blast of the FCC rulemakings and its process.

Regarding muni cable, Ramsey said, "The FCC is telling the state what to do." He predicted if the Sixth Circuit appeals court in Cincinnati, which is reviewing challenges by Tennessee and North Carolina to the FCC's muni cable ruling, sides with the FCC,  the case is likely to go to the Supreme Court and it will be reversed.

McCormick focused on FCC decisions that are "slowing investment in the industry. "

"We've seen that in every year since the recession, there were increase in broadband investment up until Title II," he said, referring to the FCC's 2014 ruling to regulate broadband.  McCormick said that annual investment growth for the industry dropped from 9% to almost nothing, contending that the privacy issue has further muddied the financial market's view of telecom. He criticized FCC policies as thwarting "the full development of the telecom industry."

The CTIA's Baker focused on 5G (fifth generation) wireless as a "life-changing technology," calling it the "high-speed spectrum frontier." She emphasized the Internet of Things opportunities.

Most of the panelists were also critical of President Obama's intervention in the net -neutrality decision rulemaking which led to the now-contested Title II decision.

"It sets a bad precedent," Powell said. "Future administrations will use it as a precedent.  We might as well have a Secretary of Communications."

At an afternoon session wrapping up the "rule of law" theme, AT&T senior VP Robert Quinn promoted the value of a revision of the Communications Act.

"We have to go back to the drawing board," he said. "The Act really doesn't contemplate the kinds of things we're doing differently with the Internet.  We compete with everyone."

FSF's May said that this year's event was the best-attended conference in its eight years.

RELATED:Mediacom: 20 Years of Growth | Rocco Commisso: From Calabria to a Cable Chairmanship | Standing Up for Small Cable’s Interests | Viewpoint: Timing Was Right for Rocco

MICHAEL POWELL, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL CABLE & TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

“Mediacom and Rocco are true leaders in our industry. Born out of risk-taking and entrepreneurism, Mediacom has grown into one of our fi nest multiple-system operators, providing to Americans in mid- and smaller-size markets an unsurpassed level of excellence in broadband, video, voice and business services. Rocco has been a passionate and stalwart advocate for cable, demanding that customers should come first, and that public policy should provide the incentives and the means for cable operators to innovate and serve their customers with high value offerings. On a personal note, there is no beer friend to have than Rocco, with his warm and gregarious demeanor and his undying support.”

TOM RUTLEDGE, CEO, CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS

“I have known Rocco for many years. He is a good friend and someone whose personal story would make for must see programming on many networks … not just CNBC. He is also the best thing besides money to come from the banking industry. Rocco has more belief in himself and the cable industry than anybody and his sheer will and guts created Mediacom, a great American success story.”

DAVID ZASLAV, PRESIDENT AND CEO, DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS

“Rocco is a true entrepreneur and has really lived the ‘American Dream’ after arriving in America as a kid. He worked hard to earn everything he has built at Mediacom. He has been a strong partner to me for the past two decades and one of the champions who has made this industry what it is today. He is a tough and respected operator with terrific financial acumen, a fighter who believes in his company, a company that 20 years later, he still runs with the passion he had the day he founded it.”

PHILIPPE DAUMAN, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN AND CEO, VIACOM

“Rocco is one of the true entrepreneurs in the modern distribution landscape — tenacious, engaged and passionate about his system and the smaller markets it serves. He’s also a quintessential New Yorker, with a well-earned reputation for being a straight talker. Viacom and Mediacom have had great success working together to grow our businesses over the years, and I have a lot of respect for Rocco and his accomplishments.”

JERRY KENT, FORMER CEO, SUDDENLINK COMMUNCIATIONS

“Rocco is not only a friend, he is a hero to the industry. There has been no champion for midsized and smaller operators more relentless or passionate than him. I count myself fortunate to have served as a cable entrepreneur alongside him.”

PAT ESSER, PRESIDENT, COX COMMUNICATIONS

“Mediacom is a great example of the American Dream coming to life and the broadband cable industry it helped build will continue to create opportunities for future entrepreneurs and innovators. Congratulations to Rocco and his team.”

JOSH SAPAN, CEO, AMC NETWORKS

“Rocco embodies the best of what is entrepreneurial and original, qualities that have contributed to the fabric and success of cable TV. His iconoclastic nature and his path less well traveled embody the spirit that makes Mediacom a great company and makes cable a great industry.”

DENNIS WHARTON, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT MEDIA RELATIONS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS

“Congrats to Rocco Commisso on two decades at the Mediacom helm. In exchange for modest carriage fees, broadcasters are proud to provide Mediacom customers with marquee primetime entertainment, the most popular televised sporting events, local news and emergency weather warnings that save lives. We wish Mediacom continued success.”

Get complete coverage of the FCC's set-top proposal.

WASHINGTON — National Cable & Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell joined with TV One president Alfred Liggins to tell reporters just what was wrong with Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to "unlock" set-top box programming and data for access by third parties.

Liggins is co-chair, and NCTA a member, of the Future of Television coalition, which was launched to push back on the proposal.

In a lengthy conference call with reporters. Powell said the proposal was, at its base, government assistance to one set of big tech interests to get access to the intellectual property of others and monetize it without the obligation to negotiate terms, share in data collection or generate revenue from the content created by others.

"I think it very easy to abstractly describe how somehow going to provide an enormous among of either innovative access to consumers or dramatically decrease costs," he said. "We believe that that customer promise is pretty illusory and certainly not on solid ground."

Powell said that stories citing rising cable set-top costs -- often citing "selective or misdirected data," he said -- fail to take into account the cost of using that "other" cable box, compared with leasing equipment. He said to check out the cost of a TiVo box (TiVo backs the set-top proposal), which he said includes $299 for a first box, $150 for a second or third box, a $14.95 subscription for the life of the box. He said that means it is not a big cost improvement over a leased box, and may even cost more. 

Wheeler has said copyrights will continue to be protected, but Powell said the cable operators' and studios' recourse should not have to be to the courts.

Powell said the FCC's proposal will take six to seven years to come to fruition, by which time the world could a look a lot different. He also said it was focused on boxes, and could create the need for one or even two boxes to accommodate the disaggregation of cable content and info, as well as network reingineering costs that will be passed on to all consumers to accommodate the subset that opts for a third party device.

While backers of the FCC proposal say it will benefit diverse programmers by providing an additional platform, Liggins said that making content available to a Google device would allow that company to monetize content without compensation, threatening the business models of diverse nets including Revolt and El Rey, and Aspire and TV One.

On the issue of privacy, Multichannel News reported this week that the FCC is considering requiring third parties to self-certify that they will comply with privacy protections as a quid pro quo for getting access to cable set-top content.

Powell said that is of questionable legality and raised the issue of enforcement, citing Federal Trade Commission actions against Google and others over privacy promises apparently not kept.

Asked what the biggest threat to the cable business model the FCC proposal represented, Powell said that, for the operators, it is the cost in time and money to build, produce, and distribute boxes when the industry is moving away from them, and for the programmers, it will devalue their existing product.

He also pointed to the collection of Big Data that is the gold of digital commerce, which would be turned over toe Google and others, who would not be required to share in the economics of that data.

He said there is another issue, which is measuring viewership and the potential for Nielsen not be able to capture, and credit, viewing on the new devices. He called that a "thorny" problem.

Fans of the just-passed permanent Internet Tax Fairness Act (PITFA), which bans taxes on Internet servcie, were weighing in Thursday (Feb. 11), including warning about the Internet sale tax legislation whose future consideration was a tradeoff for that passage.

"We applaud the Senate on today’s passage of the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act Internet (ITFA) and thank Sens. [John] Thune and [Ron] Wyden for their leadership in shepherding this important legislation throughout the process," said National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell.

Thune is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and Wyden was co-author of the temporary ITFA back in 1998 and has been pushing to make it permanent.

"Internet access is more than a convenience, it’s critical to the daily lives of Americans," said Powell. "By keeping Internet access free from state and local taxes, ITFA will permanently keep down the cost of connectivity, enable more American consumers and businesses to get online and allow the Internet to further power economic growth. We urge President Obama to sign this important legislation to make ITFA permanent once and for all.”

“This is a great day for American consumers," said Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai. "The U.S. Senate passed the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act with a strong bipartisan vote. This confirms a national consensus that state and local taxes on Internet access should be taken off the table once and for all. These taxes would make (and in some places already have made) broadband more expensive, reducing consumers’ ability and willingness to get online. This, in turn, would reduce private sector investment in deploying broadband, especially in rural areas, and inhibit entrepreneurship. I hope the bill is enacted soon—Americans need and want the certainty that the digital world will be spared the taxman.”

"Having been integrally involved in the Internet Tax Freedom Act for many years, I am ecstatic that Congress is making it permanent and eliminating the exemptions," said Republican FCC Commissioner and former Republican Hill staffer Michael O'Rielly. "This is great news for American Internet consumers. By preventing state and local taxes on Internet access and double taxation, it marks a firm path for future Internet policies. All Senate leaders, especially Senators Thune, Hatch, and Wyden, deserve credit and our thanks."

"[F]rom one extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act to the next, CTIA has consistently sought to make this pro-consumer policy permanent," said CTIA President Meredith Attwell Baker. "Achievement of that objective is now at hand [actually it will be the President's hand, which will be signing the bill into law]. We thank Senator Wyden and Senator Thune for their leadership and persistence in support of making ITFA permanent. And likewise, we greatly appreciate the work that Representatives Goodlatte and Eshoo engaged in to push the bill through the House, setting up today’s vote. This is a big win for America’s consumers.”

"CenturyLink applauds the U.S. Senate, and Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune in particular, for approving legislation that permanently protects consumers and small businesses from being taxed on their Internet access by federal, state and local governments," said SVP for public policy and government relations John Jones. "Enacting a permanent Internet access tax moratorium is sound fiscal policy that will help grow the Internet economy by encouraging network investment and broadband adoption.”

“This is a tremendous victory for America’s Internet economy, and for all of us who participate in this economy,” said Institute for Policy Innovation president Tom Giovanetti. “States are now prohibited from passing discriminatory taxes on the Internet or from taxing Internet access itself. This will ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to access the Internet without the disincentive of higher costs through taxation.”

Today (Feb. 8) marks the 20th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which updated the Communications Act of 1934 let cable into the phone business and phones into cable.

B&C/Multichannel News polled some policymakers and watchers to weigh in on the impact of the principally deregulatory rule rewrite and to offer up a birthday wish if they liked.

Rick Boucher , former chair, House Communications Subcommittee

“My involvement in formulating the ‘96 act began in 1988 when I joined with then Sen. Al Gore in introducing legislation to allow telephone companies to offer cable TV service (multi-channel video distribution services) in their telephone service areas.

“That measure became the first plank in the 96 act, and it was joined by a provision to enable cable companies and other competitors into the local telephone market, a provision to create greater competition in the long-distance market by setting the conditions for the entry of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) into the nationwide long-distance market and a provision enabling the RBOCs to manufacture telecommunications equipment. I was active throughout the committee process in processing the 96 act and served as a member of the conference committee.

“My ‘birthday wish’ for the act is that Congress adopt much-needed legislation recognizing the digital and mobile era into which telecommunications has emerged. The 96 act was about analog services and to a large extent "plain old telephone services.” These provisions will help to modernize the 96 act for the digital era:

1. Congress should pass legislation which declares that broadband is an information service not subject to common carrier regulation. The legislation should also give statutory permanence to strong network neutrality guarantees along the lines of the FCC's 2010 open Internet order. Such a bill allows both network neutrality proponents and the proponents of light touch regulation of broadband to achieve their major legislative objectives and puts to rest the longest standing and most contentious telecommunications debate of the 21st century. It would also remove the uncertainty about future broadband regulation which is restraining broadband investment.

“2. Congress should recognize in legislation the advanced nature of the Internet protocol transition and set a date, perhaps 2020, for the sunset of the old legacy copper network. Every dollar that telephone companies are required by law to expend today maintaining the copper network is a dollar not expended on fiber optics and other advanced 21st-century telecommunications infrastructures.

“3. Another legislative provision should create incentives for government agencies to surrender telecommunications spectrum for auction to commercial wireless carriers. Simply stated, government agencies should be offered a share of the auction proceeds in exchange for a surrender of the spectrum they hold. That approach appears to be working in the case of television broadcasters, and there's every reason to believe it would work well for government agencies. In my mind, that's the best approach to getting large allocations of spectrum onto the commercial auction block quickly and meeting the growing demand for spectrum for mobile data.

“4. Congress should also adopt a Bill of Rights for privacy for Internet users with jurisdiction in the Federal Trade Commission over all telecommunications privacy issues. Providing to Internet users greater assurance that their privacy is protected should result in a greater willingness to use the Internet for commercial purposes.”

Matt Polka, president, American Cable Association

“One of the lessons we should learn from the 1996 Act is that because the communications market is so dynamic and because we do not legislate often, Congress should focus on crafting broader substantive principles, establishing sound procedures to address issues, and letting the FCC handle matters day-to-day with regular oversight.

“American Cable Association members believe any new legislation should be based on the precept that the federal government should permit the communications marketplace to work to the maximum extent possible and intervene only when necessary to ensure the availability of viable and competitive high performance communications networks and advanced services to all Americans.”

FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly

"Today marks the 20th Anniversary of the signing into law of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  I vividly remember the events leading up to that moment and recall the strong leadership of my then boss, House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley.  

"The signing represented so much promise of what could be and reflected found trust between legislators.  It is a shame that many of the deals struck in the law were not actually honored and many provisions have since been abused beyond recognition by regulators, the courts and advocates.  My wish would be for the Commission to focus on the future of communications, rather than trying to drag new innovations into old fights."

USTelecom President Walter McCormick:

“With its twin pillars competition and deregulation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 set the stage for the thriving broadband Internet economy we take for granted today. It transformed the communications industry from a group of isolated monopolies to a highly competitive, diverse, and innovative marketplace.

“Consumers are the greatest beneficiaries of these evolutionary changes. Having achieved its core market-opening goals and achieved a fast-paced, dynamic broadband economy, much of the Act is now obsolete. It is time for a refresh. Congress, as the elected representatives of the American people, must ensure that telecom policy addresses today’s challenges, not last century’s, and ensures that we retain our international leadership. “

Randolph May, president, Free State Foundation

“I followed [the Act] very closely as a lawyer practicing in the field and former FCC Associate General Counsel.

“I am happy to extend ‘happy birthday’ wishes to the Telecom Act of 1996, but, frankly, it’s now long past time to be readying ‘good-bye’ wishes too.

At best, the act was a transitional vehicle to help get us from the analog to the digital world. At worse, the statute was insufficiently deregulatory in direction, or at least sufficiently ambiguous that it could be interpreted in an overly regulatory manner, which is what we have now. We need a new Digital Age Communications Act soon, and, at its heart, it needs to have a silo-less market-oriented, competition-based standard to guide the Commission’s regulatory endeavors.”

Sari Feldman, President, American Library Association

“The Telecommunications Act and the E-rate program it created is the engine powering much of the digital transformation underway in America’s nearly 17,000 public library locations.  In 1996, only 28 percent of public libraries provided public Internet access, compared with over 99 percent who report this today.  Great hanks to Senators [Jay] Rockefeller, [Olympia] Snowe and [Ed] Markey for their foresight in enabling these strides in both public access and innovation!”

National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell

Powell was traveling, but in an essay in the Federal Communications Law Journal at George Washington University Law School http://www.fclj.org/reflecting1996/,  Powell said this of the Act:

“When I was FCC Chairman I frequently testified before Senator John McCain’s Commerce Committee. The Senator always began with a pointed question to me: “Was the 1996 Telecommunications Act a success, yes or no?” He wanted me to say no, given that he voted against the Act. I always  answered emphatically, “Yes.…

“Sadly, the exceptional bipartisan consensus that gave birth to the 1996 Act and its liberating regulatory framework is breaking down. Now, the ambiguity of the Act—only getting worse with time—is being used to resurrect a muscular regulatory model that places renewed (and unfounded) faith in regulators to manage the Internet. The trends are ominous and cause me to rethink how I would answer Senator McCain today. I confess, I am wavering.”

Consumer Technology Association President Gary Shapiro

"Twenty years after it became law, the Telecom Act still helps encourage new technology and innovation," he said in a Birthday Greeting statement distributed to the press corps. "As we said at the time, the Act would aid our successful transition to HDTV, move in the right direction on spectrum and enable flexibility in product offering and consumer choice. As we also said at the time, mandating V Chip technology would accomplish little and hinder better parental option technologies.

"But overall, in the last two decades, the Act has not hindered companies from creating new products and services, and thanks to the Internet, new services and business models have benefitted the American people."

The Free State Foundation has named a D.C. all-star lineup of speakers for its eighth annual Telecom Policy Conference March 23 at the National Press Club including FCC and FTC commissioners, top FCC officials and National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell.

The speakers are Meredith Baker, president and CEO, CTIA-The Wireless Association; FCC Commissioner and former chair Mignon Clyburn; Seth Cooper, senior fellow, Free State Foundation; Randolph May, president, Free State Foundation; Walter McCormick, president,

USTelecom; FTC commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen; FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly; Michael Powell; Robert Quinn, SVP, federal regulatory, AT&T; Jonathan Sallet, general counsel, FCC; Nicol Turner-Lee, VP and chief research and policy officer, Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC); and Philip Verveer, senior counsel, FCC.

Among the topics teed up for discussion are the FCC's Title II-based Open Internet order appeal, video competition (the FCC is launching an inquiry this month into independent programmers' access to distribution channels), and universal service and Lifeline Reform (FCC Chairman Tom wheeler signaled this week that should be coming soon).

WASHINGTON — In part two of a wide-ranging interview, three of the TV industry’s top executives and diversity advocates — former Federal Communications Commission staff member Adonis Hoffman, now chairman of Business in the Public Interest; Alfred Liggins, president and CEO of Radio One, parent of cable network TV One; and Michael Powell, current president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and a former FCC chairman — talked about the power of Washington’s bully pulpit to boost diversity, the limits of more formal government action and the opportunities in disruption. Following is a continuation of their discussion with Multichannel News Washington bureau chief John Eggerton.

Part 1: Diversity Warriors: Three Power Players Explain Media's Struggle to Reflect the True America

MCN:Let’s get back to the notion of the power of the bully pulpit.

Adonis Hoffman: You [Powell] talk about the power of the bully pulpit. I tell CEOs, for example, “Listen, when you give a speech on competition or the market in your sector, why can’t you weave in — because you have this strong commitment to diversity — a couple of phrases about diversity and how important it is to your business and your company.” That costs you nothing, but gets you a long way down the road and reflects leadership.

I want to add another element to this. People often talk about a level playing field. I got it: a level playing field suggests that you have a couple of teams on the field. The sad reality is that when it comes to minorities, African- Americans and Latinos primarily, they don’t even know where the game is. They can’t even get on the field. So, the game is going on and they don’t even know where the stadium is.

So, they have to get inside the stadium, find uniforms that fit, and then when they get into the game, it’s already the third quarter. The game has been going on all along. That, to me, is one of the challenges.

I just spent three days last week with a small group from a major media company, CEO, CFO, CMO. I said: “Hey, listen, you guys are involved in a lot of transactions around the globe. You are buying and selling real estate as part of your core operations. You have contracts you are entering into, you have suppliers here. I know you have a goal of 10% supplier diversity.

“So, let’s go beyond that. What about deal flow. Have you thought about who manages your money. You’ve got a 401K program that your employees contribute to. How about weaving in a minority asset manager?”

You don’t have to displace anyone else or spend any more money. All you have to do is add an extra seat at the table and let some folks come in and participate.

Alfred Liggins: We’re talking about a business environment. Nobody should make a deal that’s bad for their business, to rob shareholders of the value they deserve for that asset just for the sake of diversity.

While you are conducting your normal course of business, think about opening up the opportunity to people who might not otherwise get a look at it. We are a black-owned company, but I’m not going to hire an employee that can’t do the job or compete in the marketplace just because they happened to be minority. That renders our organization ineffective and not able to compete and diminishes the viability of everybody else.

The same thing goes for business deals. When we bought the Clear Channel radio stations, we actually led the valuation. We had the highest multiple trading at that time. One of the reasons is, we went public at the height of the Internet bubble. But we drove the valuations, so we were able to set the high-water mark for those spinoffs at 20 times [cash flow], because that’s where our multiple was.

They didn’t give us a deal. They were actually happy. They had more stuff they wanted to sell us that we didn’t take.

The point is, people still make rational business decisions while they are trying to open up diversity opportunities. It is not in a business person’s DNA to lose money for the sake of diversity. It is not in my DNA, and I’m black.

MCN:But in a land where African-Americans were, for decades, denied opportunities in media, and given how important media is — even more so now with broadband — is there nothing the government should do? Take eminent domain. It may not be fair for some individuals in the short-term, but it’s viewed as a societal good in the long-term.

Hoffman: Twenty-five years ago I would have been right with you, John. Yeah, government needs to tear down the walls, open up the doors, kick down the barriers. But I think there are some marketplace and economic and basic political realities out here that weigh against that as an appropriate role for government.

Government has a legitimate role, in this instance, as an economic regulator. And in some limited instances, in the position of encouraging diversity of voices, which is in the Communications Act. That is part of the public-interest test. A diversity of voices could encompass the government [or] the [FCC] looking for new entrants, whether that be African-American, Hispanic, alternative lifestyle. So that is an appropriate role for government that has been authorized by Congress, because that is ultimately in the public interest.

But I really feel kind of sensitive when there is a government entity trying to shoehorn a solution, shoehorn an applicant, shoehorn a company, into a scenario where it may or may not have been able to compete.

Knock down the barriers, allow for a level playing field, then let there be some competition. If there is anything government can do, it is in eradicating barriers and enforcing where there are abuses. Then let the market have at it.

Liggins: You have to have marketplace solutions. If you give anybody an opportunity they are not capable of executing on, it won’t ultimately be an opportunity, because they will fail. That particular asset or access point will go to someone else, or perhaps get absorbed back into the market ecosystem and forever lost.

Michael Powell: And it will diminish the political support given to the opportunity. People will be less willing to give the opportunity the next time.

The one thing I would say is that we could certainly identify a number of things we probably all agree government has a small role in. But my own belief is that, while important, it will only be on the edges because of the Supreme Court precedent and a lot of things creating limitations. I think that the danger of making the government the central focus of what you are looking to solve is that you are not putting your energy and your focus on the things that really move the needle.

The marketplace is so fascinating right now. It is in complete disruption. There are opportunities lying all over the ground. To the point Alfred made: If you take a long-term view on this, are my children and the generation coming up, are they well educated enough to be leaders in the tech-oriented media digital space? Are there sufficient levels of financial literacy? Are there sufficient levels of internships?

I think sometimes we so throw the Hail Mary for some spectacular change in the number of people who own radio stations, we don’t do the hard work of tending to the field to build a more fruitful … To me, this is like my maddening Washington football team. Because [team owner] Dan Snyder wants a Super Bowl, he keeps throwing crazy Hail Marys. Every single year, we’re going to get this quarterback and it’s all going to work out. Right. Where other teams will say, ”Look, it’s going to take us four years, and we’re going to get the players, and they’re going to learn the system, and over time we are going to get better, and as time passes they are in the Super Bowl.”

Diversity can be a lot like that. You can have a big, flashy press conference and, a year later, nothing has changed. If we are really committed, there are things we can do every single day. Somebody who I let intern here, and introduced to five people and taught how the law works, suddenly is the next Alfred Liggins. That’s actually what I can do most significantly to make a difference. And if we could get more people to focus on that as an obligation, I think we can make a bigger difference than anything government is going to do with a policy or a rule.

Hoffman: I don’t want to leave the conversation without saying this.

Things are not hunky dory. There are institutional barriers. There is institutional racism. There is institutional racism [affecting] qualified professionals, and I am not talking about youngsters coming in. At the entry level, there is a wide portal. My son can get a gig just about anywhere he passes the basic muster.

But when you talk about the middle levels where the pipeline is to decision-makers, that is where things break down. And those barriers still exist in this country. I’m not sure what the solutions are; I don’t have any solutions there. But we have to recognize those things still exist.

This is the kind of environment in which we live. I am 61. My civil rights and black power days are behind me. Now I have to deal with a corporate environment where guys who may or may not have as much Ivy League experience as I do are competing and getting better opportunities — maybe because they are younger, maybe because they are … whatever.

But the point is these institutional barriers do exist. They exist in law firms, in corporate America, in media companies, technology companies. We can’t overlook that. It is a reality that those who are leaders in this generation have to find a way to deal with.

I think we also have a responsibility to sensitize and educate younger folks coming up and younger leaders, that these legacy barriers have no use in today’s society. If we are an open, free, environment, [then] those buckets and silos don’t have to exist today, because there is enough out there for everybody and, oh, by the way, the demographic is changing too.

I did not want to leave the conversation without recognizing there are some problems, and the problems may be intractable at that level. But the good news is old folks die off, and old systems die off, and they give rise to new systems, new thinking and new innovations. And therein perhaps lies our salvation.

ONLINE EXCLUSVE: Additional material not included in the print edition

MCN: I didn’t want to leave the conversation without noting that it was 60 years ago today (Dec. 1, 1955) that Rosa Parks refused to take a back seat to anyone.  Who are your personal civil rights heroes?

Powell: I want to say two things. I have too many to single out. Although who wouldn’t say Martin Luther King?

I was born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, which was a pretty astonishing year in Alabama. My mother held me as an infant four churches down when the 16th Street Baptist Church exploded. We were right there on the street. For me, that has profound significance. Having had parents who were in and around it and grew up with it, they are civil rights heroes to me to.

But let me say one last thing that comes to mind when you talk about Rosa Parks. We have a duty to raise warriors. The generation that preceded me, they were warriors, you know. And they were going to fight through. My parents taught me that you can sit around and spend a lot of time talking about fairness, or you can become a warrior. And I clerked for Judge Harry Edwards, one of the first black appellate judges in the U.S., when I first came out of law school. He sat me down in his office, one-on-one, and he said: “Let me tell you something, whether you like it or not you are going to have to be better. I had to be better. You’re going to have to be better. It isn’t fair, now get over it and go be better. Go make sure you beat people so significantly that there is no explanation for you not rising other than race. But don’t sit around wallowing. Learn how to fight through.”

Society has changed an enormous amount since 1963, but it hasn’t changed enough.  Am I teaching young people to be the kind of tough, resilient, tenacious warriors they still need to be in a society that still has the lingering vestiges of a slave history and a racist history?

I am not doing them any favors by promising them that society is going to create real safe places. To me, that is a pipe dream right now. You’ve got to raise fighters.

Liggins: I was on a panel a week ago and I was asked a question about what I thought about this rise of young minority activists like Black Lives Matter.  My response was: I love it. I grew up in the media business. My mother instilled that pride and mission and warrior-ness in me that she had.

But I get asked all the time, in the era of the first black President, is black media relevant? Aren’t we all now in the same boat?  I don’t think you ever eradicate bias -- economic bias, racial bias. The world is a battle over resources. So, when I see this group of young people being outraged by this police brutality, Ivy League educated kids that are saying “Woah!” it makes me feel good that there still is a line over which you can push somebody too far, where they stand up and say: “This isn’t right. There should be social justice in this era.”

I am seeing these college students react to some of the same issues people in the 60’s were reacting to.

When you talk about heroes, I never marched. But I have stood shoulder to shoulder with the NAACP and Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network in order to get initiatives to the African American community. And I have seen firsthand what these organizations have done to help people and businesses. We have been aided by those organizations going to bat for us to help us maintain the viability of our business.

So, I guess my heroes are all of the people who have that commitment to not just social justice, but economic and business justice. There are a lot of people still on the playing field.

Hoffman: So, I have two sets of heroes. One is my mom and dad.

My dad was a hard-working guy, a plasterer born in New Orleans in Louisiana, a segregated state, who moved his family to California for a better life. He never went past high school and worked with his hands all his life. He worked his way up and provided for us and gave us a very comfortable lower middle-class, working-class environment.  My mother was a seamstress in a sewing factory. She left school in the 10th grade. Together they provided a quiet example for my siblings and me growing up. It was: hard work; stay out of trouble; don’t come home with any bad grades because if you don’t get into college on your own, it ain’t gonna happen.

The other is a man very important to me, Merv Dymally. He was born in Trinidad, came to the United States in the 1950s, worked his way through Lincoln University, earned his PhD at night, became a teacher of special education students,and became the first black lieutenant governor of California.

He was a liberal Democrat who believed in coalition politics. He took kids from the neighborhood, and if you had any mettle about you, he would put you in a room and tell you go get some coffee, or make some copies, and by the process of osmosis we all got introduced to the political system.

But he did something that was even more significant. Quietly, he was probably responsible for the election of most of the African American and Latino legislators in the state of California during a certain period. I’m here today because he brought me to Washington and said, “Hey, you’ve got an opportunity, go for it.”

He was a person who took the initiative to influence not just me but a number of other people in both the political and business worlds. 

You don’t have to have a trumpet to be a leader.  You can take one or two people by the hand and change society. So, I think that when I look around, sometimes I don’t think I’m pulling my weight. I take care of my family and a couple of young guys that I like to mentor. But I know I could be doing more and I would actually like to do more.

I think that’s the challenge for the folks of my generation who now have made it a little ways over the hump, and the wolf isn’t at the door, to bring some folks along.

But I do have a problem with some of those who get in those positions. In the hood, you’ve got access deniers and access providers. You’ve got the guys who get in the room and say: “I’m the only black guy here. This is good.” You’ve got other guys who get in and say: “I’m the only black guy here. Open the door and let some brothers up in this joint. “

I want to be a guy who is an access provider, so the room is better and richer as a result.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers,  ISBE (SCTE’s global brand), and Tuck Executive Education at Dartmouth said National Cable & Telecommunications Association president and CEO  Michael Powell will be a featured presenter during the SCTE/ISBE Leadership Institute at Tuck Executive Education at Dartmouth, set for April 17-22 on the Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, N.H.

SCTE said Powell, a former chairman of the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, is making a repeat appearance as an SCTE/ISBE-Tuck guest lecturer, where he’ll offer legal and regulatory perspectives that complement the curriculum’s business and leadership topics.

Powell’s remarks will be followed by Q&A with program participants representing a cross-section of cable operator, vendor and programming executives, SCTE said.

The SCTE/ISBE-Tuck program, not in its sixth year, brings together senior directors, vice presidents, senior and executive vice presidents and C-level executives from across the cable industry.

Applications for the SCTE/ISBE-Tuck program are available for qualified executives in the United States and abroad through SCTE and ISBE at http://www.scte.org/tuck.

Adonis Hoffman, Alfred Liggins and Michael Powell deserve a collective nod for agreeing to talk honestly and at length with Multichannel News about the state of diversity in the media and elsewhere.

The three executives — Hoffman, a former Federal Communications Commission staffer now chairing Business in the Public Interest; Liggins, CEO of Radio One, which owns cable-TV network TV One; and Powell, a former FCC chairman and now CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association — are the subjects of this week’s Q&A cover story, with more to come in next week’s issue.

The conversation was an important one to have. There should be more frequent and serious attempts to define and encourage diversity in the workplace.

As neither an African-American nor a captain of industry (or policy), I went into the talk with a certain lack of familiarity on the topic. But that was part of the reason for doing it. As much as I wanted others to hear the participants’ stories and observations, I wanted to get schooled myself.

I can’t know what it’s like to walk even a few steps in their shoes, but one takeaway was that racial justice still requires beating on some closed doors that should have already been opened. Another is that success is both a sword and shield: A sword because, increasingly in business, success is dictated by the color green above all else; a shield, because the more successful you are, the harder it is to deny opportunities to others.

Speaking of career advancement advice he received from Judge Harry Edwards, one of the first black appellate judges in the U.S., Michael Powell says in the next installment of the Q&A that excellence is the best response to racism: “Make sure you beat people so significantly that there is no explanation for you not rising other than race.”

Diversity is just as good for business as it is for building that post-racial shining society on the hill, particularly if we are aiming ahead of the target.

Society is becoming increasingly diverse and, unless Donald Trump succeeds in replacing Lady Liberty’s torch with a stop sign, it will become only more so.

No one is saying to hire the wrong person for the job. What they, and we, should be saying is, take affirmative steps to include diverse voices in the conversation and put diverse faces in front of the camera, behind the camera and in the C-suites and boardrooms.

That includes using government relationships, as well as its levers, to bring minorities into conversations they were systematically excluded from when licenses were handed out and big media companies were built.

It is ultimately equality of opportunity that will build a more inclusive society, that and recognizing that attempts to stereotype people, any people, are borne of ignorance and fear and are ultimately doomed to the dustbin — and rogues’ gallery — of history.

WASHINGTON — Police shootings of unarmed black men. Campus unrest over racial issues that brings down chancellors. Community activism asserting the value of black lives to shaken politicians. All of these trends put a spotlight on unresolved racial tensions in a country that has come a long way, but still has a way to go in its march toward a more inclusive society.

That divide extends to the media, where minority ownership continues to lag a general population that is becoming a “minority majority.”

Multichannel News reached out to three business and policy leaders who have blazed trails for others to follow. They shared frank and candid stories about how diversity efforts work in the real world, how relationships in Washington can be a powerful tool to diversify media properties, and what still needs to happen.

Adonis Hoffman, currently chairman of Business in the Public Interest and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, is former chief of staff to FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn; Alfred Liggins is president and CEO of Radio One, whose properties include 55 broadcast stations and the TV One cable network; and Michael Powell, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman, is president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

In Part I of a wide-ranging interview hosted at NCTA headquarters here, Hoffman, Liggins and Powell talked bluntly with MCN Washington bureau chief John Eggerton about life in a not-quite-postracial America and the degree to which success can serve as a sword and shield in the fight for media equality.

Part 2: Diversity and the Power of Relationships: Hoffman, Powell and Liggins Offer Insights on the Next Steps in Fostering Inclusion

MCN:What is the current state of media ownership diversity?

Alfred Liggins: It is beyond dismal. There has been significant rollback due to industry consolidation and a lack of any policy catalyst to further increase the minority ownership ranks.

One of the things I have always taken an issue with were people who sort of banged the diversity gavel solely for the sake of making a quick buck.

We take stewardship of the assets we own pretty seriously as a communications link to our community. We like being in the business; it’s part of our identity, and we have done what we could to stay competitive. There are other people who will take advantage of a diversity opportunity to get an asset, turn around and sell it to somebody else and make money. But you might as well be buying Viacom or Time Warner stock if you want to do that.

Michael Powell: I would agree with Alfred, particularly if your metric is in the classic lens of the traditional media. It is relatively dismal. But I would also say that these have become very big businesses. They require very substantial economic wherewithal and require enormous amounts of capital, particularly if you look through the traditional lens of, “Does somebody own a set of radio stations or television stations or an entire cable network?”

But media is evolving and exploding in all kinds of new and iterative ways. I think it is very hard to simply characterize the role of minority significance only in terms of ownership. Ownership is a pretty weak story. But in the cable industry, for example, minority employment and participation in the business is a relatively positive story over time. We’re proud that in the cable industry, 39% of that population is minority, and that is something that is very concertedly worked on.

Getting minorities into C-suites and onto boards and into companies and into management also has a very dramatic effect on the public stewardship, that is, serving the greater needs of society around the representation of diverse points of view and voices. Those people can play an important role. And as things become even more innovative through digitalization and technology and Web properties and streaming, we’ll have to have evolving conceptions of what it means to be an owner and what the significance is.

It’s going to be pretty hard if you want to have a black Google, but it doesn’t mean that ecosystem doesn’t provide some profitable opportunities to be good stewards and to express those voices. Although I personally think that’s in its infancy and we should have a sense of dissatisfaction with the growth and pace of that at the moment. But I think it’s a new frontier that should be fully explored.

Liggins: There are many more black-owned websites now than there ever were radio and television stations. Those are media outlets as well.

Adonis Hoffman: With respect to participation not just as owners, but as content providers and content creators— those in front of, those behind the cameras, the ones that do the deals — those numbers, while there is some improvement in terms of the impact of particularly African-American and, to a lesser extent, Latino influences in content, you don’t see the same with respect to ownership or participation in the deals or the financing.

It is a big business. It’s a big dollar industry. When you talk about big dollar industries, at some point there has to be some parity.

And there are some opportunities. As my boy and my daughter and their millennial generation gets into the business of business, they’re not looking to buy television stations. They’re not looking to buy radio stations. They’re not looking to buy newspapers or magazines. They’re either looking to do an app or something along those lines that resonates with their media consumption habits. And I think those are where the opportunities lie now.

So, looking backwards to legacy issues, it’s bad. Looking forward to opportunities on the horizon, then I think the future is bright. It needs some nurturing, though, to get where we want to get.

MCN:You touched on programming. There is much discussion about diverse programming. But there have been waves of diverse programing in the past that then receded. Are we in one of those cycles?

Hoffman: My biggest concern is with the success of [Fox series] Empire. Advertisers are jumping on the Empire bandwagon. With that success, we’re going to have the same sort of situation we had when President Obama came into office. That is, “black president, we gave at the office.”

You have Empire, run with it and, oh, by the way, when Empire runs its course and all of that has happened, Fox will move on to another genre. So I am concerned there may be some “victimization of success” in terms of content and, like all fads, it will run its course.

Michael Powell: I don’t disagree with that, but I think there is a big “but.”

If content companies are anything they are into aggregating audiences in order to make money. If you look at the socio-demographic trends in the United States — for better or worse, depending on whose perspective you take — this country is becoming brown.

Right now, for children who are in elementary school, they are already in a majority-minority nation, and by various estimates, say 2040, you could have a country that is predominately one flavor or another of what you would call a “minority” today. And that trend is going to continue even more profoundly into this century.

So they are going to be the audience. I mean, I have seen the thing Adonis is talking about with Empire — “you got yours, you’re done.” But it could also mean you are at the beginning of a turning point, which is, that’s who the audience is.

I think the thing about Empire I found so interesting is no one expected it to be the hit that it became. It was a stunning, meteoric rise, and that might have indicated at least an appreciation of who the public really is in this day and age and what they are quickly becoming. It’s the same problem you see in politics. How are you going to be an effective political party if you don’t find a way to be a home to what we call “minorities” in America today?

Liggins: I think it actually is a turning point because there is something different today with what’s going on with black content in particular. In the past, you had the networks, and they would have their runs with minority content. Fox got launched on …

Hoffman:In Living Color.

Liggins: And then Martin and Living Single, and then they switched to more mainstream programming. The same thing happened with the UP network. All the networks have historically had their runs with minority content. The difference this go-round is the cable networks.

When we launched TV One in 2004, there was only BET and they were running music videos. Now, you see a proliferation of black programming across the cable landscape, and it is not necessarily networks that are targeted to African-Americans. WE [tv] has a slate of African-American programming; the Oprah network [OWN]; Bravo’s biggest show is [The Real] Housewives of Atlanta. So you’ve got 300 cable networks out there all playing in the black space.

And the primary reason is: a) there are more black people today, because the population is growing; and b) they watch much more television than the general population. So, they are a great target market for a television network.

I happen to think Empire is faddish, and the second season is kind of waning, and it may not be here two seasons from now. But I fully expect that Bravo will always have some black-female-targeted show on the air, given the success that they have had. Also, cable has grown in terms of audience size. AMC can have the No. 1 show in television [in The Walking Dead]. There is more money being spent on cable networks, they have more money to program, so I think they stay in the game in this genre. And I think that is the difference between now and, say, 15 years ago.

MCN:So, the important color is not black or white, but green?

Liggins: Black people don’t care whether a network is black-targeted. If there is a great show, they’ll go there. Now, they may come back to my network [TV One] more often because I program to them 24/7 or they build an affinity for our tone and voice that one of the general-market networks doesn’t have. But rest assured, if someone’s got great, entertaining and compelling shows, they will find that network.

Hoffman: Green is the color that matters, but it is being driven by brown and black eyeballs.

If you look at the Nielsen report that came out about the impact that African-American and Latino consumers particularly have, we over-index on radio consumption, we over-index on TV consumption, packaged-goods consumption and, interestingly, in consumer-electronics adoption, which should lead to greater participation in all the ancillary businesses that surround that.

So, if we know that black folks and brown folks drive the numbers for any given show, whether it’s cable or broadcast or even over-the top, then, ideally, those numbers should be reflected across producers, dealmakers, etc. And those numbers we don’t see.

What I am trying to say is there is an outsized influence on the zeitgeist and the culture of this country provided by African-Americans, primarily in terms of music and style and fads, and to a lesser extent, Latinos. And once we recognize that reality is here, right now — we don’t have to wait until 2040 — and find a way to incentivize business opportunities as a result of that, then that gets us to where I think we want to be as a society.

MCN:Let me go back to the government a minute. Is there anything the government should do? That brings me to the minority tax certificate [giving businesses a tax break for selling broadcast and cable properties to minorities]. Why doesn’t Congress reinstate it?

Powell: I have heard about this for the better part of my life and career, and one of the reasons is that it actually is one of the few things that was ever done that created actual results. So it was unceremoniously, and wrongly, repealed.

Tax policy is the single greatest lever of U.S. government activity that aligns and incents behavior. In a capitalist country like ours, that’s the way it’s done. If you want people to dig for oil, you provide incentives and tax credits for people to do that. So, if you really cared about the objective, those are the principal tools to make an impact. I think that is why it worked and why it remains talked about and popular.

MCN:So why isn’t it the law?

Powell: I think if we are being candid, I don’t have any real optimism that you will see a revival of that in the current political climate. For one, there is just this sort of war over government expenditures. And I don’t think the country’s economic temperament is suited to succeeding with this initiative.

And even though they pay lip service, you really haven’t seen a champion emerge in the Congress to really go to war for it. You get people saying they like it. But in my career, I’ve never seen anyone double down and fight for it.

And I am worried that it is stale. It was yesterday’s idea and had value, but can’t we be more creative, more innovative? And I think it also occurred at a pre-Internet time. I am not really sure that is the right thing to be incenting anymore.

One thing I wanted to layer in here is that nothing is ever guaranteed or assured. For the better part of 60 years, diversity of voices and perspectives has deeply woven itself into what you would call the traditional incumbent communications sector. But that sector now is being largely dwarfed by a new sector to which these norms and the extension of that long government dialogue has not been extrapolated.

If you go into the tech space, which by far is driving the future, look at it from an employment standpoint. In this day and age, when there are 39% minorities in this country, Google has 1% black employees. Maybe Apple has 7%. They produce all kinds of content, all kinds of product, all kinds of activities, and you won’t find a huge presence of this whether you look inside a Netflix frame or you look inside Facebook or Amazon Prime.

I’m not saying these companies are necessarily hostile, but I do think you’re getting into a world in which these values get swept up into this euphoria of what it means to be tech, what it means to be cool or hip. And I worry significantly that diversity has not yet found any foothold in that part of the emerging economy.

When I look at students today that are complaining about the degree to which their culture is fairly represented, whether [at the University of] Missouri or Claremont McKenna [College in California], these are kids growing up in the social-networking era that was supposed to be this nirvana for communications and understanding that actually seems to be having the opposite effect in significant ways.

I don’t know how to have that conversation yet, but it’s time to start. What does diversity mean for the 21st, 22nd century? We are quickly not going to be talking about, God bless ’em, radio stations [turns to Liggins sympathetically, who laughs], or, God bless me, good old-fashioned cable channels.

Like Adonis said, my children are app-driven people. There are young black men who have grown up in a world that is dominated largely by that atmosphere and where do they see themselves there?

MCN:So should the FCC just punt on all this legacy diversity action it has yet to take?

Liggins: My view on the FCC and their diversity efforts is that they regulate industries and businesses that have control of assets of the nation. Individuals don’t own the spectrum. The nation owns the spectrum and we have licenses for it. So, I think the FCC does have a role in making sure there are diverse voices and opportunities.

Hoffman: I spend a lot of time talking to boards and investors these days about diversity and corporate responsibility. And the point I try to make, and it is analogous to government, is that leadership starts at the top. You get a CEO who says, “We need to be more diverse, let me see what I can do.”

The best example I have seen of FCC leadership in terms of diversity has been transaction-specific.

So, you have a transaction, whether a merger or disposition of assets, and some enlightened commissioner or leader — perhaps a member of Congress — says: “We have an opportunity to make an impact right here, right now. We don’t have to go through the APA [Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how the federal government establishes regulations] or through a rulemaking or anything.” Other than this: “I know Alfred is in the business of broadcasting or cablecasting, and I know these guys have a need to either dispose of something. Why don’t I give them a call and say, ‘Hey, you guys get together. You’ve got my blessing. Go find a way to make something happen. And then when you get done, come back and we’ll stand up and take a photo for the press.’”

I think that as simple and informal as that sounds, that’s the way stuff happens. And the bottom line is that the guys who just got TV stations recently as the result of a spinoff of assets, I think it sort of happened that way. Somebody said: “Oh, by the way, X company is looking to do a deal. They might be interested in selling some assets to a minority. Do you know anybody?” Boom, it happens.

That happens in the business world all the time. It’s informal and it’s hard to leave progress to such informality, but that leads to progress.

Liggins: It does happen in the business world, but it’s usually to a friend, another business associate, a banker’s friend, who says, “Hey! I’ve got this assignment to spin off these assets and we’ve been doing business, so I’m going to look in your direction.” I see it all the time. And that is probably the No. 1 reason why there isn’t deal flow in the minority communities, because they are not in those circles where the business ultimately gets transacted.

Powell: Look, when I was chairman of the FCC, I cared about diversity a lot. I tried to do a lot of things. But I will say one of the things that quickly settled into my mindshare was that the FCC should understand what it can’t do. It is fundamentally an economic regulator. It is not a social regulator.

The problem the commission has is structural. No matter how good-hearted or how committed, the problem is it doesn’t really have the tools and assets to make the kind of scale-sized impact it is often encouraged to try. And, by the way, they have several niches in which they have profound obligations, as Alfred mentioned in broadcasting.

I think they owe the country answers on things that have been sitting there now for years that they should resolve. But the truth is, it is very tough to have a rulemaking, a policy, an order without violating the APA or the organic Telecommunications Act.

Hoffman: Or the Constitution itself.

Powell: Or the Constitution. Making real progress is knowing what your limitations are, and what I realized was that the most powerful asset I had both as a chairman and, frankly, as an African-American chairman who cared, was to use my bully pulpit, and my ability through relationships, connections and influence, to make that conversation alive. I can start a committee [Powell formed a diversity committee during his FCC tenure]. I can introduce him [points to Liggins] to an important media mogul. And I think that leads us in much more effective and productive ways. I could have started a lot of proceedings and I think I would have been yet another guy who started a lot of proceedings and, years later, you wonder why nothing has changed.

Liggins: Three of the biggest transformative business events that helped us grow Radio One and TV One to what they are today were, one, chairman Bill Kennard [the first African-American FCC chair], who didn’t have any policy levers. But radio was consolidating and [Clear Channel Communications chairman] Lowry Mays and [Infinity Broadcasting president] Mel Karmazin were buying up the industry, and Lowry Mays and Clear Channel were buying a lot of AM and FM radios and they had a lot of overlap and they had a hundred and something stations that had to be sold. He [Kennard] told them: “Minority ownership is very important to me. You should sell stations to minorities.” And they did. And a lot of people bought a lot of radio stations and we doubled the size of our company in terms of cash flow. That was transformative for our radio group.

A second one was when we launched TV One and Comcast gave us a distribution deal and became our partner. It would not have happened without that and that was on the heels of their AT&T Broadband merger.

And then, cable networks lose a lot of money — we lost $30 million a year for four years before we turned a profit. But you have to get enough scale to get over the hump, which is about 30 million subs.

Chairman Powell introduced my mother, Radio One founder Cathy Hughes, to [21st Century Fox chairman] Rupert Murdoch at some meeting on the eighth floor [the commissioner’s floor at FCC headquarters] and said [we] were starting a cable network targeted to African Americans and he [Murdoch] should meet with them.”

I got the meeting, and the next thing you know we had full distribution on DirecTV. And that was the instant distribution piece that made TV One profitable. It got us over that hump, all because people in power said it was important to them.

Hoffman: I completely agree. Those moments were brought about as a result of seminal events where the commission or the government had a key role. So, you have to have the recognition on the part of government that: “Here’s a seminal moment. I’ve got an opportunity to do something if you’ve got a commitment. So, here’s a transaction before me.” I agree, rulemakings alone, policy prescriptions, [it] ain’t gonna happen, but there’s an opportunity to impact far beyond that. And those seminal moments, I think in this media environment, are coming up more regularly than they have in the past.

MCN:But doesn’t that translate to diversity by deal condition?

Powell: There is something we should be careful about here, because if it’s read wrong, this could sound inappropriate. We’re not talking about government officials saying, “you’d better sell to a minority or else” or “I am going to hold over your merger, or else.”

But, let’s just face it, you have to raise the dial. You have to make people conscious of the options. I have never, as a government official, told Rupert Murdoch or anyone else they had to do anything. But what I told them is: “Diversity is a really important value in this country and there are really talented entrepreneurs out there trying to get a break, and I just would encourage you when you get a chance, let me introduce you to one ’cause I happen to know one. You are going to sell them anyway, why don’t we make sure you put in your pool an opportunity?” And if they hear that from the chairman of the FCC, I don’t think they are taking a directive. But they are saying, “look, it’s important to him.”

That is what leadership is, right?

The world works on relationships and connections and opportunity. You make your own luck. The problem for our communities is they have historically been kept out of those interlocking relationships.

And, by the way, it works just this way with the sole-white community. I guarantee you Rupert’s son gets introduced to so-and-so because that’s the way the world really works. And what you can do when you are in a position of leadership is help accelerate network connections that are otherwise very difficult for a community that hasn’t been born into them and raised among them and had an opportunity to grow them.

And I think that whether you are a government official or the head of a trade association or the head of a company, you can take on a personal responsibility. I have never taken a job where when I sat down to think about my vision where there wasn’t a bullet on that piece of paper that said, “What are you going to do on the diversity front as part of your leadership?” And I’ve done that in every job I’ve ever had.

NEXT WEEK:In Part II, learn more about the power of the bully pulpit to boost diversity, the limits of government intervention, the opportunities in disruption and some personal civil-rights stories.