Extending MVPD Status to OVDs Means Higher Programming Costs, MSG Holdings Says

Requiring that programming be available to online video distributors (OVDs) means consumers will pay more, Madison Square Garden Holdings said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-261 on a meeting between Adam Levine, senior vice president-legal and business affairs, and Media Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning staff. Much of the programming MSG licenses doesn't come with rights for online distribution because sometimes the rightsholders distribute through other outlets such as Hulu, Netflix or YouTube, or directly to customers through their own platforms, MSG said. The cost of such rights, when they're available, can be prohibitive, and those higher programming costs "will be passed through ... eventually to consumers," MSG said. "Even for programming that MSG produces and owns, acquiring online distribution rights for all elements of such programming can be very difficult." Changing the definition of multichannel video programming distributor to include some forms of OVDs "would not vest online distribution rights in MSG" since those rights agreements generally provide for distributing through specific forms of media and not some blanket rights agreement to MVPDs in general, MSG said: "There is no record of any market failure that would justify any changes to the MVPD definition," and such a change "would substantially and unnecessarily harm the handful of programmers subject to the rules."