PUBLIC, EDUCATIONAL, AND GOVERNMENTAL (PEG) SERVICES IN THE DIGITAL TV AGE HEARING BEFORETHE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INTERNET OFTHE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION JANUARY 29, 2008 Serial No. 110–84 ( Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce energycommerce.house.gov U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 48–184 PDF WASHINGTON : 2008 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan, Chairman HENRY A. WAXMAN, California JOE BARTON, Texas EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts Ranking Member RICK BOUCHER, Virginia RALPH M. HALL, Texas EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey FRED UPTON, Michigan BART GORDON, Tennessee CLIFF STEARNS, Florida BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois NATHAN DEAL, Georgia ANNA G. ESHOO, California ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky BART STUPAK, Michigan BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico GENE GREEN, Texas JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING, Vice Chairman Mississippi LOIS CAPPS, California VITO FOSSELLA, New York MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania STEVE BUYER, Indiana JANE HARMAN, California GEORGE RADANOVICH, California TOM ALLEN, Maine JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois MARY BONO, California HILDA L. SOLIS, California GREG WALDEN, Oregon CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas LEE TERRY, Nebraska JAY INSLEE, Washington MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin MIKE ROGERS, Michigan MIKE ROSS, Arkansas SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania JIM MATHESON, Utah MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana JOHN BARROW, Georgia BARON P. HILL, Indiana PROFESSIONAL STAFF DENNIS B. FITZGIBBONS, Chief of Staff GREGG A. ROTHSCHILD, Chief Counsel SHARON E. DAVIS, Chief Clerk DAVID L. CAVICKE, Minority Staff Director (II) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 8486 Sfmt 8486 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC SUBCOMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INTERNET EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania FRED UPTON, Michigan Vice Chairman Ranking Member JANE HARMAN, California J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas CLIFF STEARNS, Florida JAY INSLEE, Washington NATHAN DEAL, Georgia BARON P. HILL, Indiana BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming RICK BOUCHER, Virginia JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING, BART GORDON, Tennessee Mississippi BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois VITO FOSELLA, New York ANNA G. ESHOO, California GEORGE RADANOVICH, California BART STUPAK, Michigan MARY BONO, California ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York GREG WALDEN, Oregon GENE GREEN, Texas LEE TERRY, Nebraska LOIS CAPPS, California MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey HILDA L. SOLIS, California JOE BARTON, Texas (ex officio) JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan (ex officio) (III) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC C O N T E N T S Page Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of Cali- fornia, opening statement .................................................................................... 1 Hon. Cliff Stearns, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, opening statement ................................................................................................ 2 Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the State of Massachusetts, opening statement ..................................................................... 4 Hon. Fred Upton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement ................................................................................................ 5 Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michi- gan, opening statement ....................................................................................... 7 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8 Hon. Jane Harman, a Representative in Congress from the State of Cali- fornia, opening statement .................................................................................... 8 Hon. Lois Capps, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement ................................................................................................ 9 Hon. Hilda L. Solis, a Representative in Congress from the State of Cali- fornia, opening statement .................................................................................... 10 Hon. Gene Green, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, prepared statement .............................................................................................. 11 WITNESSES John B. O’Reilly, Jr., Mayor, City of Dearborn, MI .............................................. 11 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 14 David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President, Comcast Corporation, Philadel- phia, PA ................................................................................................................ 68 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 70 Gail Torreano, President, AT&T Michigan, Detroit, Michigan ............................ 98 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 99 Annie Folger, Executive Director, Midpeninsula Community Center, Palo Alto, CA ................................................................................................................. 101 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 103 SUBMITTED MATERIAL Jeff Trudell, director of technology, Wyandotte Public Schools, letter to Mr. Dingell ................................................................................................................... 174 Elaine McClain, letter of January 28, 2008 to Messrs. Dingell and Markey ..... 175 Linda A. Badamo, director of cable TV and communications, Clinton Town- ship, MI, letter of January 28, 2008 to Mrs. Gail Torreano ............................. 178 City of Boston, MA, letter of January 28, 2008 to Mr. Markey ........................... 182 Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO, National Cable & Telecommunications Association, letter of February 15, 2008 to Messrs. Markey and Stearns ...... 185 David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President, Comcast, letter of February 13, 2008 to Mr. Dingell .............................................................................................. 188 ‘‘Commitment,’’ AT&T graphic ............................................................................... 190 (V) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC PUBLIC, EDUCATIONAL, AND GOVERNMENTAL (PEG) SERVICES IN THE DIGITAL TV AGE TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2008 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INTERNET, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:00 p.m., in room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Edward J. Mar- key (chairman) presiding. Members present: Representatives Markey, Harman, Gonzalez, Inslee, Rush, Eshoo, Green, Capps, Solis, Dingell (ex officio), Stearns, Upton, and Barton (ex officio). Staff present: Amy Levine, Tim Powderly, Mark Seifert, Colin Crowell, Maureen Flood, Philip Murphy, Neil Fried, and Garrett Golding. Mr. MARKEY. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sub- committee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Today we are going to have a hearing which examines the issues related to pub- lic, educational, and governmental services on cable systems. I want to begin by welcoming my good friend, Cliff Stearns, from Florida as the new ranking member of the Telecommunications Committee. Cliff and I have been friends since the first day that he came to Congress and came immediately down to the House gym and began blocking my shots, and so that has been a—I thought I would make that honest disclosure up front, Cliff. And I think we are going to have a great relationship as the years go by. What I would like to do though is first, because Anna Eshoo just absolutely has an urgent reason to leave, to recognize her to make an opening statement first, and then I will recognize Cliff Stearns and then make my own opening statement. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from California. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ANNA G. ESHOO, A REP- RESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALI- FORNIA Ms. ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate it and to the ranking member, Mr. Stearns, for allowing me to just make a brief opening statement and kind of leap frog over others. The House Intelligence Committee is beginning a very important hear- ing right now, and so as a member I really need to get there. But let me just say a few words and thank the witnesses for being here. (1) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC 2 Certainly to Ms. Folger, Annie Folger, who is here from Palo Alto, California, which is the heart of my district, as the Executive Di- rector of the Midpeninsula Community Media Center. They provide a wonderful service to our community. The mission of that organi- zation, as it is for others like hers, is to use television and the Internet to create and distribute programs that promote and cele- brate individual expression, local achievements, education, local cultural exchanges, arts appreciation, and civic engagement. Those are very, very important things in our communities across our country. In fact, it is a snapshot of civic life in America. Her organization and others also provide the most local programming on television. They cover all the city councils, all the meetings, all the things that go on in the public square that the public really needs to be in- cluded in in all the areas that I just mentioned. Now the PEG channels are a vital first class function for communities across the country, and I think that they are being threatened by second class treatment on AT&T’s video service. Ms. Folger is going to testify today about AT&T’s U-Verse product, which is new to my congres- sional district. And I hope that we can get the kinks out of this, that it doesn’t carry the characteristics that seem to be part of it now. Now AT&T recently received a statewide license in California to provide video service, but unfortunately they are televising PEG channels in such a cumbersome way that it threatens access to those channels nationally. There is going to be a short demonstra- tion that Ms. Folger is going to put on. I think it will be of great interest to the subcommittee and will underscore how U-Verse doesn’t permit viewers to record PEG channels on their DVRs, that the picture quality is a quarter of the quality of a normal channel, and closed captioning is not provided. I think we have to do much better. I think that when a state license, a statewide franchisee li- cense is issued, that there are public obligations to that. So, Mr. Chairman, I am sure that part of the regular order will be that we can write letters for the record to our witnesses and have them re- spond. And again, Ms. Folger, thank you for being here. Thank you to my colleagues for allowing me to move in front of you. I hope that we can get past these issues, and I am sure the witnesses will ad- dress the points that I am irritated about and help us to have a comfort level and that it will no longer be the case. So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to all my colleagues. I very much appreciate it. Mr. MARKEY. The gentlelady’s time has expired, and we welcome you, Ms. Folger. My wife grew up in Palo Alto, and she believes that her marriage to me is proof that there is such a thing as downward social mobility leaving Palo Alto, so we welcome you. The chair recognizes the ranking member, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CLIFF STEARNS, A REP- RESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and thank you for that generous introduction. You and I have been friends, and we share interest in sports across the board. And I have been VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC 3 an admirer of yours, and also you and I have debated many times, and you are very skillful, so I have a great deal of admiration for you. And I welcome the opportunity to be the ranking member and also to compliment my predecessor, Mr. Upton of Michigan, who did an excellent job, and he is helping me, and I look forward to this transition with his help and yours, Mr. Chairman, and I am so pleased to be here. And I would say to the witnesses we appre- ciate your time. I would say though to the gentlelady from Cali- fornia that perhaps my take on this issue is perhaps a little bit dif- ferent than hers. I think there is a way to balance out the need for innovation and let the cable companies have a little bit of an opportunity to provide innovation and to provide more channels through the digital rather than the analog spectrum, with also pro- viding access to the consumers to PEG channels, so I perhaps will give a different perspective, which I think would be healthy, Mr. Chairman, in a hearing of this nature. Mr. MARKEY. You just have to be careful today when you say the gentlelady from California, because that is all we have today. You have to be more specific today. Mr. STEARNS. Okay. Well, I am speaking of Anna Eshoo, of course, who previously spoke and opened up the hearing. But I do welcome the gentleladies from California, too. Mr. Chairman, we now have a marketplace of convergence where labels don’t matter anymore, where there are other—there was one separate to phone, cable and wireless, and so forth, and now it is all blurring together, and the convergence is coming. And in order for this innovation to continue, we have got to allow the companies to innovate and not put handcuffs on them. Cable operators may need to convert cer- tain channels to digital format. This conversion allows cable opera- tors to save capacity for faste, broadband service and more chan- nels, including more high definition content, so going digital also enables advanced features such as video on demand and inter- activity. In fact, each analog PEG channel uses the same space as 3 high definition channels, 10 video on demand channels, 15 standard def- inition channels or 42 megabits per second broadband service. So the purpose of this hearing is to examine the digitization of PEG channels, what that means to the consumer and the innovation I talked about earlier. Now the Communications Act allows munici- palities to require cable operators to carry PEG channels. Some cit- ies are concerned that digitizing PEG content will make it less ac- cessible to consumers. I understand their concern. Comcast in Michigan announced plans this past November to offer PEG chan- nels only in digital format. As a result of Comcast’s change, a subscriber with an analog tel- evision would need a digital cable set top box to continue receiving the PEG channels. Comcast has offered to provide such a consumer one set top box per household at no cost for 1 year. Additional boxes after the first year would cost $4.20 per month. Cable compa- nies like our television broadcasters are in the process of con- verting their transmission to digital format. Because the cable transition does not directly implicate the public airwaves or the availability of spectrum for emergency responders, no transition deadline has been mandated for cable operators. Instead, they are VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC 4 making individual decisions on when and how to transition to dig- ital based on capacity constraints, consumer demand and the avail- ability of their investment capital. Most cable systems today have some subscribers receiving analog channels and some receiving digital channels; thus, they are cur- rently simulcasting the local broadcast channels and PEG channels in both analog format and standard definition digital format. So my colleagues, so long as cable operators meet their legal obligations regarding carriage of particular content, we should allow the free market, not the heavy handed regulation, to determine how and when to convert to digital. Congress had been pushing cable opera- tors to carry more content as well as increased broadband speeds and penetration. Cable operators are attempting to balance these sometimes competing forces. Cable providers are in a better posi- tion, my colleagues, than regulators to determine how to maximize service for their consumers. If they calculate wrong obviously they are going to lose business. Let them do it, but I believe this hearing is very important to hold, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY, A REP- RESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSA- CHUSETTS Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman. The chair will now recog- nize himself for his opening statement. And I will begin just by saying that we do have a busy agenda ahead for this year that will address many telecommunications policies topics on both the legis- lative and oversight fronts, with our next significant oversight hearing scheduled for February 13 on the status of the digital tele- vision transition. Just 4 weeks into the consumer converter box program, the Commerce Department has almost 4 million requests for coupons worth about $160 million, so it is off to a brisk start. We are also following very closely the ongoing auctions at the Fed- eral Communications Commission of the licenses to the frequencies the broadcasters will be relinquishing as part of the digital tele- vision transition. I am eager to see the extent to which the auction actually results in the introduction of new competitors into the marketplace in dif- ferent regions around the country, as well as the advent of new wireless services, devices, and applications. Initial reports of lag- ging interest thus far in the so-called D block license, a commercial wireless opportunity with a unique public safety mission, is dis- couraging. The auction is obviously not over yet, and it is still pos- sible for a successful auction of the D block license. However, if the auction ends and the D block has not met its reserve price, the sub- committee will actively review the parameters of that auction, in- cluding an assessment of its various conditions, the reserve price, and the structure of the public safety trust, and it would be my in- tention should events at the auction require it to work closely with FCC Chairman Martin and his colleagues to develop a plan for re- auctioning these frequencies in a way that will foster new wireless competition and enhance interoperable public safety communica- tions across the country. VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:46 Sep 22, 2009 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\CWELLS1\110-84 SCOM1 PsN: JIMC