YouTube TV has become the latest media entity to wind up in new FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s partisan crosshairs.
In a letter to YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan, and his boss, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Carr said he’s seeking to determine if the Google-owned vMVPD has a policy or practice that “discriminates against faith-based programming” after allegations arose when it did not sign a carriage deal with Great American Family. Carr subsequently tweeted out his letter on X. (You can read it here.)
Further, the President Donald Trump appointee suggested that while the FCC doesn’t regulate vMVPDs now, a “diverse group” of FCC “stakeholders” has encouraged the commission and Congress to expand FCC oversight to regulate virtual pay TV operators in the same way it does linear ones, with multiple open proceedings seeking comment on the topic.
And citing the Communications Act, he noted that “Congress delegated authority to the FCC to address certain discriminatory practices in the negotiation of carriage agreements between traditional multichannel video distributors (MVPDs) and video programming vendors.”
In the letter, Carr noted that independent programmers often file complaints with the FCC when an MVPD or vMVPD refuses to carry their channel and acknowledged that many times “it is clear that the MVPD is making a good-faith business decision based on marketplace conditions and consumer demand.”
However, in the case of Great American Media, Carr said the company wrote a letter to the FCC chair claiming that YouTube TV “deliberately marginalizes faith-based and family-friendly content” and based on that, he's seeking to determine whether YouTube TV has such an alleged policy or does so in practice.
Acquired in 2021 by an ownership group that includes former Hallmark Channel-owned Crown Media chief Bill Abbott, Great American Media bills itself as “America’s premiere destination for quality family-friendly programming, including its ongoing pre-Easter “40 Days of Lent” film series.
According to Great American Family’s landing page, its network is carried by Charter Spectrum, Comcast and most of the leading linear MVPDs, as well as most of the top virtual platforms, including Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, Fubo and Philo. Carr also alluded to this in his letter.
Great American Family does have a position on ad-supported YouTube, with 275,000 subscribers for its free Great American Pure Flix channel. But it has no carriage on the YouTube TV, the largest virtual pay TV service with reported 9 million-plus subscribers.
In his letter, Carr struck on “free speech” themes previously marketed, quite successfully, to the political right by X owner Elon Musk.
“Importantly, these allegations of faith-based discrimination come at a time when American public discourse has experienced an unprecedented surge in censorship,” Carr wrote. “In too many cases, tech companies silenced individuals for doing nothing more than expressing themselves and in the digital town square.”
Is YouTube TV, which just raised prices to $83 a month in January, and which already carries the similarly themed Hallmark Channel and several other networks from Abbott’s previous employer, Hallmark Media, “discriminating” against Great American Family by not adding it to its bundle of just over 100 channels?
It’s probably easier to answer this question: Does Carr have an agenda?
The letter to Pichai and Mohan came just about a month after Carr reached out to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, informing him that the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau would be investigating the cable giant and its NBCUniversal division for the alleged unlawful practice of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Under Carr, the FCC has also launched an investigation of Paramount Global and its 60 Minutes news program for alleged bias against Trump in an interview with then-US Vice President Kamala Harris in the run-up to last year’s election. Paramount’s CBS, meanwhile, this week asked the FCC to end its investigation into edits of the 60 Minutes interview, making its own free speech argument and contending the federal government risks becoming “a roving censor” squashing free speech rights.
Asked about these FCC investigations in a Feb. 27 one-on-one interview with Semafor founder Ben Smith (video replay available here), Carr cited numerous instances during the Biden Administration in which right-tilting media companies including Fox Corp. and Sinclair Broadcast News were alleged victims of FCC bias.
Responded Smith: “It sounds like you’re trying to deepen this cycle rather than just end it.”