Big Tech stumbles into a big brawl over C-SPAN’s streaming future
“The public has every right to see the debates that go on in this place, whether it is the votes on the floor and the debates on this bill or whether it is committee hearings,” the Minnesota Democrat said.
This dispute has even caught the eye of an important regulator, the Federal Communications Commission. Under its new chair, Brendan Carr, appointed by President Donald Trump, the commission has taken an aggressive approach to challenging tech and media institutions.
- An FCC official declined formal comment on the C-SPAN blackout among streamers but offered this background comment: “We’re aware of the issue, and we’re looking into it.”
For revenue, C-SPAN receives a small sum of money for each cable subscriber, currently set at little more than seven cents per household.
The drop-off from 100 million to 70 million subscriber households would be difficult but manageable. Shaving off another 20 million households, because YouTube TV and its streaming cohorts won’t carry it, has left C-SPAN reeling.
- Officially, YouTube TV says talks are ongoing.
- Other streamers — including Disney, which owns Hulu + Live TV and is merging it with Fubo TV — have let YouTube to take the lead in defending the blockade against C-SPAN. Fubo officials have only suggested being “open to discussing” adding the political network. Disney did not respond when asked for comment.===
C-SPAN supporters believe that YouTube TV is the gold standard of streamers and, if it added C-SPAN, the others would follow suit. But streaming-industry allies have suggested that C-SPAN needs to change its model and start running ads so their industry can recoup what would otherwise be lost revenue by adding the nonprofit to their services.
- pharmaceutical companies,
- labor unions,
- or any other special interests, unlike other news organizations and political newsletters focused on Congress.
Its morning show, Washington Journal, still has a call-in line where viewers identify as Democrats, independents and Republicans to ask relevant and sometimes off-the-wall questions to guests who include government officials and important journalists.
What’s perplexing to the congressional supporters of C-SPAN is why such major corporations have put up a fight over something that is barely a rounding error to their financial books.
In the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, Alphabet reported that all of YouTube’s platforms brought in $50 billion in ad revenue.
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