The rise of cable, satellite and streaming over the past 20 years has made over-the-air television appear as a footnote of the information age, yet it remains one of the last distribution mediums operated in the public interest; unencumbered by rising prices, specialized equipment or unwatchable buffering during live sports and new releases. However, broadcasting conglomerates are now attempting to sound a death knell to this dying public medium by persuading the FCC to allow them to encrypt the public airwaves through their digital restrictions management (“DRM”) program, known as NextGenTV (ATSC 3.0) Content Security. This will give an industry trade group the ability to control which tuners will be approved to view television broadcasts, something unprecedented in mass distribution on public radio waves.
The history of over-the-air television and radio is one of both immense wins for working class people in the Progressive era, and our failure to defend those wins from right-wing reactionary forces. The ‘Blue Book’, or Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, published in 1946 by the FCC, set the gold standard for airwaves as a public resource with public interest obligations for broadcasters. For broadcasters, it laid out four main criteria to satisfy the public interest obligation: air noncommercial programming without advertising, carry local live programming, support discussion of local public issues, and prevent excessive advertising. While the Blue Book faced immense opposition from conservatives and broadcasters, and was never adopted in its entirety, many of its principles did eventually make it as official guidance, in effect to this day. The Blue Book is one of the few American success stories in the decommodification of private property into a public resource, a lesson it would behoove socialists to learn from.
However, those regulations are able to serve the public interest because the FCC has kept the airwaves free of encryption, ensuring people can openly access, inspect, share and enjoy broadcasted media unencumbered from the watchful eye of corporations. This has numerous benefits for the public: channels are tunable without an internet connection, allowing for emergency alerts and weather updates during climate disasters; content can be received with a simple antenna, requiring no specialized cable box or decoder equipment used to monitor and restrict viewing; but importantly, it keeps the heart of free over-the-air television beating, because if broadcasters are able to make viewing over-the-air TV cumbersome enough, consumers may leave for streaming or cable, where they can make exorbitant margins on retransmission fees and price hikes with no obligation to serve the public interest.
This is what broadcasters are now attempting to end. As the FCC begins the transition to the new ATSC 3.0 standard for broadcasting TV (from the current ATSC 1.0 standard), the industry has formed a number of groups to mount a lobbying blitz to persuade the commission to lift restrictions on encryption. The primary group leading this charge is known as A3SA, or the ATSC 3.0 Security Authority. Made up of the nation’s largest broadcasters, including NBCUniversal, ABC, CBS, and Fox, they argue that while viewers benefit from open over-the-air television, we are living in an “unparalleled period of signal theft and piracy,” and that we must lock down the public airwaves to protect their content. However, locking down content has costs for the public. It gives broadcasters the ability to control access by requiring the use of an approved tuner, destroying the community built by over-the-air TV. These tuners are more expensive and more difficult to use than traditional ‘rabbit ears,’ while broadcasters lock out competing vendors from receiving decryption licenses, including SiliconDust, the maker of the popular HDHomeRun tuner. Internet connections become a necessity, undercutting the premise of over-the-air TV, by requiring one for firmware updates and digital certificates required to reliably decrypt a signal. In a climate disaster, these flaws are amplified, putting civilian lives at risk. Citizens must be able to tune in to critical emergency alerts and local television, and fragile broadcaster-controlled tuners threaten that vital access. The reality is that broadcasters like NBCUniversal don’t want anyone watching over-the-air that could purchase cable, where they make money on both retransmission fees and their own cable products like Xfinity—all coming at the expense of exploiting a public resource we have protected for decades.
We must fight this unparalleled attack on our public airwaves, and stop corporate greed in this country. While many Americans don’t tune over-the-air TV anymore, we all rely on open and free broadcasting on our public airwaves. They promote local programming, provide emergency information during climate disasters, allow for collective enjoyment of media across all income levels, build communities, and encourage civic participation. We cannot let the hubs of our media environment go dark.
You can contact the FCC commissioners to let them know you oppose encrypting the public airwaves by filing a comment for docket 16–142.
