Biden Urges FCC To Police Bullshit Cable Fees, But It Can’t Because His Staffers Screwed Up The Gigi Sohn Nomination Process
from the regulatory-theater dept
For years we’ve noted how cable companies routinely screw you over with all manner of bullshit fees. One Consumer Reports study found that roughly 25 percent of your cable bill is made up of completely nonsensical fees, designed to let companies advertise one rate, then sock you with a much higher bill. It’s estimated this false advertising nets the cable industry an extra $28 billion in additional revenue annually.
Generally speaking, as it is across the airline, hotel, and banking industries, federal and state government leaders are perfectly fine with this kind of fraud, provided companies are relatively clever about it. Ripping off U.S. consumers at scale is basically treated as little more than creative marketing.
Though last week, the Biden administration came out of nowhere with a formal press statement urging the FCC to crack down on bullshit cable fees; a welcome change of pace for a government that’s usually too afraid to directly criticize politically powerful telecom and media giants like Comcast:
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under the leadership of Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, proposed a new rule that would require cable and satellite TV providers to give consumers the all-in price for the service they’re offering up front. Too often, these companies hide additional junk fees on customer bills disguised as “broadcast TV” or “regional sports” fees that in reality pay for no additional services. These fees really add up: according to one report, they increase customer bills by nearly 25% of the price of base service.
The problem: the FCC can’t actually do that, in part thanks to strategic bumbling by Biden staffers and advisors.
If you recall, the Biden administration was an historic nine months late in nominating popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC, giving the telecom industry and GOP ample runway to launch a multi-year long homophobic smear campaign that ultimately derailed her nomination. Biden’s team (and her would be future colleagues at the FCC) provided zero meaningful messaging support as the industry spread lies about Sohn’s track record and policy positions in the press.
From what I understand Biden personally supported Sohn, but his team showed none of the strategic urgency they showed in the rush appointment and subsequent promotion of FTC boss Lina Khan. Democratic staffers also failed to schedule Sohn confirmation votes with any urgency, and buckled repeatedly to bad faith Republican demands for additional, unnecessary show hearings.
As a result, we’re now several years into the Biden administration and the FCC still lacks the voting majority to do anything deemed even controversial by industry, including policing bullshit cable fees.
Biden’s safer replacement FCC nominee, Anna Gomez, may not be seated until late this year or early next, giving the agency very little time to implement any actual policy reform ahead of the next presidential election, at which point control of the agency could revert to Republican leadership that routinely coddles telecom monopolies and lobotomizes the key regulator tasked with overseeing them.
Even when the existing, relatively feckless FCC does act on issues like predatory fees (decades after the fact), the solution is always “transparency.” As in, they’ll push for rules requiring that cable and broadband companies be more transparent about how they’re ripping you off, but they won’t actually stop them from ripping you off, and often won’t implement policies bringing more competition to bear.
Actually stopping cable and broadband monopolies from ripping you off would teeter to closely into the realm of rate regulation, which has generally been ranked somewhere right below devil worship by US policymakers. But the problem is agencies like the FCC rarely embraces pro-competitive policies to drive market-based solutions either, so what you wind up getting is dumb regulatory theater.
It’s great the Biden administration is taking aim at fee-based industry fraud in public messaging, but the administration’s strategic incompetence related to the Sohn appointment still speaks volumes.
Filed Under: biden, broadband, broadcast tv fee, cable bill, cable fees, cable tv, fcc, fees, gigi sohn, regional sports fee