Two House Republicans are urging the FCC to resist the urge to apply “1990s-era laws and regulations” to virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs). They argue, in part, that those Internet-delivered pay-TV services bring critical competition to the pay-TV sector and that Congress, not the FCC, has the authority to alter those rules, anyway. That warning arrived in an Aug. 9 letter to FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel from House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Communications Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-Ohio).
Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) has been named chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee by E&C chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). Latta had been ranking member of the subcommittee. The committee has primary oversight of the FCC.
As expected, Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) has been named ranking member of the House Communications Subcommittee. Latta had chaired the subcommittee, but the gavels traveled to the Democrats for the new Congress following the midterm elections.
GOP members on the House communications and technology subcommittee are going after the FCC any way they can, offering up three draft bills to improve the transparency of the agency in the wake of its net neutrality order passed in February.
Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) last week introduced the FCC Analysis of Benefits and Costs or “ABCs” Act. The bill would require the FCC to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of proposed rules and final rules.
