FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai urged the commission to...
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai urged the commission to repeal the sports blackout rule at its Sept. 30 meeting. The government shouldn’t intervene in the marketplace “to help sports leagues enforce their blackout policies,” he said in an op-ed on Gannett-owned…
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Cincinnati.com (http://cin.ci/1uMG6q0). He rejected arguments from rule advocates that leagues might televise their games only on cable or satellite TV, saying the leagues’ contracts with over-the-air broadcasters are enduring. By moving games to pay-TV, “the NFL would be cutting off its nose to spite its face,” he said. While leagues would remain free to negotiate deals with broadcasters and pay distributors to enforce the blackout policy without the rule, “taking the government’s thumb off team owners’ side of the scale would create momentum for a more accessible sports experience,” he said. There’s broad support for lifting the sports blackout rule, “and the FCC appears ready to accommodate that wish,” said public interest attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman. In proposing to repeal the rule, the FCC took the view that the goal of Congress in requiring the open video systems and direct broadcast satellite blackout rules was to achieve parity with cable, he said in a Benton Foundation blog post (http://bit.ly/1uBhmmg). If the commission were to repeal the cable rule, “it would fulfill the congressional goal of parity by repealing the other two rules as well,” he said.