Jay Rockefeller: “two decades ago, Congress passed the Cable Television and Consumer Protection Act of 1992 in part to stop cable…”

“two decades ago, Congress passed the Cable Television and Consumer Protection Act of 1992 in part to stop cable companies from leveraging their market power to block competition from satellite television providers. Congress did so with the realization that market forces alone did not act to create true competition in video services, mainly because the entrenched interests held dominant control over the content necessary for new services to compete effectively. As a result, regulation in the name of competition was necessary to empower consumers and facilitate the development of new innovative video services. Twenty years later, DirecTV and Dish Network have become the second and third largest pay TV providers in the Nation, respectively. The legislation that I am introducing today, the Consumer Choice in Online Video Act, builds upon the legacy, and the promise, of the 1992 Cable Act. More needs to be done. Simply put, the video marketplace today, even with a variety of cable and satellite television providers, still is one of ever-escalating rates and of limited choice in terms of programming packages. Consumers find themselves paying more and more each year for their pay TV service, and those yearly rate increases often far exceed inflation. Even though consumers have at their fingertips hundreds of channels of programming, most homes watch very few of those channels and would prefer to have more choice in what they pay for each month.…”