Posts for 'DOJ'

I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 137th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast.

First up this week, Colin and I discuss this week's news that the Department of Justice is investigating whether cable TV companies are acting to suppress online video. As I wrote on Wednesday, it's good for the government to be vigilant, but for now anyway I don't believe online video providers or consumers are being impacted (rather I suggested if the DOJ wants to address a REAL way consumers are being harmed it should look into the multi-billion dollar per year subsidy non sports fans are forced to pay for expensive sports networks).

Colin disagrees with me. As he's stated in the past, he believes the use of "private networks" to deliver video traffic to connected devices that doesn't count against data caps creates preferred broadband lanes and are inappropriate (Colin believes Comcast is doing this with its recent plan to deliver video services to the Xbox).

Wrapping up, Colin shares observations from Cisco Live a big analyst event he attended earlier this week and I do some shameless plugging for next Tuesday's VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit.

Click here to listen to the podcast (20 minutes, 36 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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The WSJ has broken a big story this morning that the Department of Justice is apparently pursuing an antitrust investigation into whether cable TV companies are taking steps to limit the rise of online video usage. The DOJ is primarily looking into the role of data caps, the use of private networks for delivery of certain programming to connected devices, the use of TV Everywhere authentication, and even the model of most-favored nations clauses between cable TV networks and pay-TV distributors.

While it's generally a good thing for the government to keep an eye on how business is conducted (the recent financial crisis demonstrates what happens when it doesn't), to my mind none of these issues are really hurting consumers, yet anyway. Rather, if the government truly wanted to focus on an immediate, huge, and worsening consumer problem in the pay-TV business, it should be focused squarely on sports, and more specifically the multi-billion dollar annual subsidy that non-sports fans are required to pay due to current cable network bundling practices.

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