Analyst: FCC Ownership Should Reflect Digital Competition

The Federal Communications Commission should consider including pay TV (cable, satellite, telecommunications) and online video as relevant local market competitors to broadcasting.

That is according to media analyst David Bank, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets, in prepared testimony for the June 11 media ownership hearing in the House Communications Subcommittee. He says that with broadcast TV controlling only about a third of the primetime audience, "it’s clear to us that broadcast TV regulation should probably consider a framework in which pay-TV in total as an ecosystem is a competitor to Broadcasting. This is the case in small and big markets alike."

Then there is the Internet. "[T]he current regulatory framework was constructed in a media ecosystem that basically didn’t include the Internet. While it may have contemplated a broad PC-based Internet consumption environment, it certainly didn’t contemplate a Mobile application based ecosystem," he says.