E.W. Scripps Co. CEO Adam Symson called for stations to be able to negotiate retransmission consent deals with virtual MVPDs the same way they do with cable, satellite and telco TV distributors.

Newly created virtual multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) like YouTube TV and Sling TV currently negotiate with broadcast networks for national carriage on behalf of their owned stations and affiliates. The issue recently came to a head when the CBS affiliate board said a deal reached with Fubo TV did not give affiliates enough value for their local programming 

Owners of CBS affiliates rejected the deal and Fubo is now streaming a national feed provided by CBS. 

Earlier this week on Sinclair Broadcast Group’s earnings call, CEO Chris Ripley said “there is a growing consensus within the broadcast community and also within D.C., that this situation with the virtuals needs to change,” Ripley said. “It really is not consistent with the way the industry is set up and the way market power should be used.

On Scripps’s earnings call Friday morning, Symson said, “There’s no question that the virtual MVPDs and their customers want the local feeds.”

Symson said Scripps believes “the virtual MVPDs need to be considered MVPDs, just like cable and satellite.”

“What’s the difference whether the programming comes in over IP or cable or satellite or coax or fiber?“ he asked. ”It’s essential the same business and broadcast affiliates should have the wherewithal to negotiation directly with the virtual MVPDs for the distribution of our signal with the networks out of the way.”

Symson noted that Fubo was “pretty immaterial” as a distributor. “These are not existential issues or existential negotiations. But this is an example of where the regulatory framework needs to catch up to reality,” he said. 

“We expect fair value in the distribution of our signals, whether they're to traditional MVPD virtual MVPDs,” he said.

Scripps already has extensive experience dealing with vMVPDs through its national networks division. Scripps has gained carriage of its digital over-the-air broadcast networks on vMVPDs including YouTube TV, which is now carrying Scripps’ Ion, Bounce and Court TV channels.

Scripps president Lisa Knutson said she expects vMVPD carriage to contribute to a 40% growth in the company’s connected-TV ad revenue in 2023.

“Our networks have grown with the growth of virtual MVPDs during this quarter,” she said. “We are planning to launch additional free ad-supported, or FAST, channels in the coming months.”

Also on Friday, at the end of Gray TV’s fourth-quarter earnings call, chairman and CEO Hilton Howell weighed in on the issue of Paramount negotiating with virtual pay-TV providers on behalf of CBS affiliates, an arrangement Gray and other station owners initially agreed to in order to help fledgling virtual carriers get off the ground. 

“As a matter of just basic law and common sense, no other company has a right to negotiate on behalf of my company without our consent,” Howell said. Saying he was not going to negotiate in public or criticize anyone, he said “the negotiations in the past everyone agreed to, so they were handled in that way. The affiliate groups feel that times change.”

Howell said he read Ripley’s remarks on the topic in B+C. “I personally endorse his comments and where he articulated it,” he said. 

“I’m very hopeful that we can work out something with all of the networks,” Howell said. “But we consented to where it has been. We will not be consenting going forward.” ■

Dish Network said it reached a retransmission-consent agreement with Raycom Media by the 6 p.m. Aug. 4 deadline, avoiding a blackout of 41 stations.

As the deadline approached, Raycom had begun warning Dish customers its stations could go dark.

Related:Dish, Raycom Face Retrans Impasse

Dish acknowledged the agreement in a terse statement Thursday. Terms were not disclosed.

Although it has a Raycom deal in hand, the satellite TV service provider still is negotiating with Tribune Media regarding 42 stations in 33 markets that went dark to Dish customers on June 12.

The cable industry’s regulatory environment has heated up in the past year, with potential new set-top-box rules and the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to back off on retransmission-consent reform just the latest in a long list of cable-centric rules that could place undue burdens on operators large and small. While limited resources would make it hard for small, independent operators to fight lengthy regulatory battles, they have the American Cable Association to do it for them.

As The Independent Show in Orlando, Fla., drew near, ACA president and CEO Matt Polka spoke with Multichannel News senior finance editor Mike Farrell about how small operators can deal with the changing climate. An edited transcript follows.

MCN Independent Operators of the Year:WideOpenWest Covers Its Bases | Buckeye: Building on Broadband

MCN:What are the biggest issues for small operators going into the show?

Matt Polka: The theme of the show is, “Refocus and Reconnect.” I think that is appropriate in many ways. I would also say recommit. We’ve never had a year like this where we are under such enormous regulatory strain, where the types of important rulemakings that are moving at the commission, each on their own, could have a significant impact on our members’ ability to deploy more broadband service. We’re telling our members to refocus, reconnect and recommit, so you can be strong in the face of this storm.

As part of that recommitting, we’re saying, “Recommit with us at ACA so your voice can increasingly be heard.” We’re also telling our members to look at their customer service as a key differentiator that will help them maintain a strong positon and will also keep them from scrutiny.

A couple of weeks ago, Sen. [Claire] McCaskill (DMo.) and Sen. [Rob] Portman (R-Ohio) had a hearing regarding customer service for primarily the larger MVPDs. And while that hearing wasn’t focused on our members, it’s a good lesson to never ever take anything from a customer-service perspective for granted, [to] ensure that we as cable operators are presenting the best cable customer service we can provide and demonstrating that value that we are a vital connection to the community.

There are four primary issues from a rulemaking perspective: The set-top box rulemaking; the rulemaking on business data services, otherwise known as special access; the broadband privacy rulemaking at the FCC; and then just the implementation of Title II. Each one of these is a specific regulatory effort — although [with] Title II, the FCC hasn’t said what it might do yet — each one of those areas are crucial because of the cost impact to comply with the regulation, man hours, paperwork hours, the diversion of resources from deployment of broadband service to what we see as needless regulatory compliance.

MCN:It seemed like all of the indications pointed to the FCC finally doing something on the retransmission-consent reform front. How will inaction affect the industry going forward?

MP: Based on even as late as late last week [July 15] meetings with the bureau and other commission staff indicated there was going to be an order. For [FCC chairman Tom Wheeler] to say, “Nah, I don’t think so,” we’re shocked by that. I think what it’s going to mean — this isn’t the year when most agreements come up, it’s next year — unless something changes at the FCC or at the Hill, we’re going to see the impact of basically an unfettered broadcast industry that has carte blanche to do whatever it wants. That’s not a result that anybody wants.

Related >It’s a Small World After All: A Q&A With the NCTC's Rick Fickle

MCN:This year is an election year. Does that mean even more change is in store for the industry?

MP: We’re looking ahead to what’s going to happen in 2017. Heavens knows what is going to happen in the presidential elections. We’re going to have to deal with a new administration, most likely an interim FCC chair and then a new FCC chair. There will be a new head of the Energy & Commerce committee in the House because of term limits there; it’s unknown whether the Senate is going to flip from Republican to Democratic and whether [Democratic] Sen. [Bill] Nelson from Florida will be the chairman or [Republican] Sen. [John] Thune from South Dakota will remain the chairman.

We’re telling our members regardless of all of this uncertainty in the political environment, we at ACA are well-positioned because we’ve done the homework, we’ve done the grassroots, we’ve done the groundwork, so regardless of these possible changes we can stay focused on our policy objective moving forward.

One of the big issues that remains is whether [FCC Democrat Jessica] Rosenworcel is renominated and how that could affect the commission, and whether chairman Wheeler, as is tradition, steps down. There could be some bills on the Hill passed during the lameduck session, like an enhanced transparency exemption extension bill.

The Senate not too long ago passed a small-business broadband bill that increased the number of subscribers that subscribe to an ISP from 100,000 to 250,000 to comply with the FCC enhanced transparency requirements. That bill is likely to get passed at year-end. The rest of the Hill agenda for this year is kind of cloudy.

MCN:Small operators have been very outspoken over the years on a lot of regulatory issues. Could consolidation change that?

MP: It remains to be seen what impact consolidation will have on our segment of the industry. I do see some strategic combinations of our members that help to provide maybe better operational control within a particular area. It really remains to be seen whether some of the large interests have any interest in acquiring our members.

The truth of it is, I don’t care who you are, Mediacom, Cable One, WideOpenWest, that’s still really small. Even if you combine some of the larger smaller ops, you’re still tiny compared to Charter and AT&T and Comcast. If there is any consolidation, I tend to think we’ll still be fighting for the same issues.

MCN:One issue that small operators have been especially vocal about over the years has been forced bundling by programmers. Now that larger operators have taken up the skinny-bundle mantle, do you think we’ll see some traction there soon?

MP: I do. We’ve always comically but also seriously at the ACA called ourselves the canary in the coal mine. What has happened is whether it is retransmission consent or problems of cable programming choice or lack thereof, or other issues, is that larger MVPDs have gravitated toward us as they have seen in their own companies with much greater scale the need for relief and reform.

As those companies bring their greater influence to bear, it complements what we at ACA have been doing for years quite well because we compare and contrast on the same track to say the market has changed; the regulations that were once needed aren’t needed anymore with the dynamic, changing marketplace; and that government should release the straps of regulation and let the market decide.

Offering all local over-the-air broadcast TV channels has been a gap in Sling TV’s lineup since the OTT service launched last February, but a new device being made by corporate cousin EchoStar could help to bridge it.

As first spotted by gadget/tech blog ZatzNotFunny, Sling TV, Dish Network's OTT-TV service for cord-cutters, and EchoStar’s Sling Media unit are getting closer to the launch of AirTV, a device that looks like the recently launched Slingbox M1 place-shifting device, but includes an over-the-air TV tuner.

That OTA A tuner, blogger Dave Zatz speculates, essentially replaces a Slingbox client app with the Sling TV app.

“So, one would hook up the AirTV to an antenna and one’s home network via WiFi or Ethernet and that local television content would be beamed directly into the Sling TV app – at home or while on the move,” Zatz wrote “I’ll go ahead and assume the ultimate goal here [with AirTV] is for the OTA channels from one’s residence to be co-located amongst the pay television channels of Sling TV’s $20 streaming service in a unified guide.”

Zatz, who is led to believe that Sling Media is developing a family of “non-traditional” Slingbox products, came across the AirTV trademark last summer, and The Donohue Report found a few more details on the product plans last October.

EchoStar and Dish have not announced pricing and a possible launch date for AirTV. A Sling TV official said the company could not comment on rumors and speculation.

In the meantime, Sling TV has been making some progress with respect to adding local broadcast TV channels to the mix.

Earlier this week, it announced it is beta-testing a new $20 per month multi-stream service that is anchored by Fox-owned networks, including Fox broadcasting stations in Fox's owned-and-operated markets. In February, Sling TV started to offer ABC in select markets as part of a new “Broadcast Extra” add-on package that sells for $5 per month (on top of a core $20 per month Sling TV package) and also includes Univision and UniMás.

In January, Sling TV launched an app on Channel Master’s DVR+ platform, a subscription-free DVR that integrates broadband connectivity (for OTT services) and over-the-air TV tuning capabilities.