Cable industry: Give us a level playing field

CHICAGO–Viacom wants to buy NBC. In fact, if General Electric put its broadcast network on the block, “we would absolutely love to … be a bidder,” said Mel Karmazin, Viacom’s president/COO, speaking at the opening general session of this year’s National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) Cable 2001.

Karmazin’s comment was only partially tongue-in-cheek. Viacom’s substantial stable of programming networks includes MTV, VH-1 and broadcaster CBS, and federal rules forbid any one company from owning one than one broadcast network.

“You can own CNN, but you can’t own NBC,” he pointed out.

Karmazin’s comment came in response to a question concerning cable’s legislative goals and how much interest the industry would like from a federal government that has been pretty much hands-off since passing sweeping telecommunications legislation in 1996.

Brian Roberts, president of Comcast, took a slightly skewed view. While supporting less government interference, he pointed out, “there might have been some interesting things that might have been faced by our industry if not for the ’96 Telecom Act,” that opened up competition among the telecommunications service providers by knocking down some regulatory barriers that cable operators faced in providing interstate services, among other things. “There was a fundamental fork in the road in ’96.”

That fork has led some in the telephone industry to say that cable is getting an unfair advantage in the high-speed voice and data space.

“In telephony, people are frustrated,” Roberts admitted.

AT&T Chairman & CEO C. Michael Armstrong countered that the ’96 legislation was good for competition because “you have to de-monopolize the monopoly” in order to improve conditions. “There are bad proposals running around Washington right now,” Armstrong warned.

All cable wants is a “level playing field,” added Jerry Kent, president & CEO of Charter Communications. “We don’t have any legislative agenda right now.”

In response, Roberts concluded that, “Everyone wants a level playing field, as long as it points toward them.”