Parker, who spent a lot of time before the panel, said that until
the recommendations were rendered, he had a great deal of empathy
for the panelists. "The decision was really made by this panel of
three judges. Unfortunately, the weakness in his whole process is
that these three judges had no experience with the satellite
industry," comments Parker. "It's a very complex matter when you
start talking about the relative values of signals delivered to
satellite, with the network white areas, compared to delivering
those same signals via cable. It's very complex. As I sat there and
observed these three judges and I thought 'Do they have any inkling
of what these people are saying?' It's difficult for somebody in the
industry, but for three people who have never been exposed to it, I
had some compassion for them - until they came out with their
decision."
Parker believes that there is a major point of contention in the
CARP decision. "When the Satellite Home Viewers Act was extended in
1992, the copyright owners wanted language in here that said that
when a panel such as the CARP heard evidence to set a rate, that
they would base it on market value. Our contention all along was
that there is no such thing. That's a nice sounding term, but there
is no such thing as market value per se that somebody could clearly
define for programming channels sold through different technologies.
"We tried, and were somewhat successful, in getting language in here
that said that the rates that cable pays would be one of the
standards that they would look at along with a couple of other
things like the effects that it would have on competition. The CARP,
in their opinion, pretty much ignored those qualifiers and just
looked at what they considered 'market value.' They went with a
market value that an attorney that represented PBS came up with, a
model that put the value at about 27 cents and that's what they went
with. There was no precedent for charging the same rate for all
these signals because there's a difference between rebroadcasting a
network signal and a local independent signal. Theres a difference
between a syndex superstation and a non-syndex superstation signal.
The previous CARP recognized some of those differences and had
different rates for the different signals. This panel took the
simple way out and set the same rate for all the signals. That just
baffled everybody," said Parker.
"As a packager, we're very displeased and feel its very unfair that
the satellite industry should be stuck with a copyright fee of 27
cents when the cable legislation is much less than that," says
Parker. "The thing that very troublesome is we've had two lawsin he
last several years, one being the Cable Consumer Television
Protection Act. In that Act, it said that cable programmers could
not discriminate in their pricing between technologies. And then we
had the Telecommunications Act to promote competition in cable and
telephone. So we've got Congress saying that we want competition and
we want parity in the rates that are chaged to cable and satellite
and on the other hand, here's an administrative branch of the
governement coming along and doing just the opposite."
"We don't think its fair, and we don't think its the kind of thing
that Congress is trying to promote in those two bills," notes
Parker.
Parker says that the most effective way to become involved is to let
Congress know how the industry and satellite consumers will be
affected by the ruling. Parker did comment that even with the new
rates, if consumers look at C-band rates compared to cable and DBS,
C-band satellite TV is still a bargain. "Of course, DBS is going to
be hit with these same rate increases," said Parker. "C-band is
still the best buy around."
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