Many area Packers fans were unable to watch last week’s showdown with the Dallas Cowboys — and not just because they couldn’t bear to see Terrell Owens running free time and again through the Green Bay secondary.
The game was broadcast on the NFL Network, which local cable provider Charter Communications does not carry. A similar situation occurred during several Wisconsin Badger football games this fall, and now again during Badger basketball season, because Charter also lacks an agreement to show the Big Ten Network.
In an attempt to facilitate agreements between the networks and cable providers, Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, and Rep. Kitty Rhoades, R-Hudson, introduced the Fair Access to Networks (FAN) bill last week. The legislation would allow a network to seek arbitration if it is unable to come to an agreement with a cable provider to carry its programming.
This surely makes for good publicity, and no legislators are ever going to lose their seats because they tried to help the people of Wisconsin see the Packers and Badgers. “We are simply establishing a fair way to end these disputes so that our constituents are no longer shut out of programming they should have access to,” Ms. Rhoades said innocently enough in a release.
Ms. Rhoades has it wrong. While access to live coverage of sporting events on television is nice — and certainly something many of us have enjoyed over the years — nobody is entitled to see their favorite teams compete on television. Cable providers and programming content creators are both private companies, and if they can’t reach agreements with each other, nobody’s rights have been breached.
This does not mean consumers have no recourse. Fans can switch to satellite providers that do carry their favorite networks, or they can venture to bars or elsewhere when they cannot see a game at home on television.
The state simply has no business in these negotiations. Should a cereal maker be able to compel arbitration if a supermarket refuses to carry its product at a certain price? Of course not. Yet that is exactly what the FAN bill tries to do — only in the realm of cable television.
Like Mr. Hansen and Ms. Rhoades, we hope Charter can reach agreements with the NFL and Big Ten networks. But the terms should be amenable to both sides, and not the result of any arbiter’s decision.
