It's Official: FCC Proposes OTT Reclassification

It is now official, except for the commissioner's statements. The FCC has voted unanimously—three Democratic "yes" votes, two Republican "concurrences"—to propose reclassifying linear over-the-top (online) video providers as MVPDs, at least for the purposes of access to vertically integrated programming. That is according to a source who has seen the vote tally.

The vote actually came last night, a drop-dead, must-vote deadline for the Republicans. The Democrats had voted it already.

The item will likely not be released until Friday, along with the commissioner statements. A concurrence is approval, but with the suggestion that they would have done things somewhat differently, likely to be expounded on in those statements. Neither Republican commissioner offices were available for comment at press time.

For the full story go to Multichannel.com.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.