Comcast's franchise renewal: a more important event for Philly

OK, let's all take a deep breath about our hometown cable powerhouse. You can make merry or mourn over Comcast's decision - pushed by federal regulators - to drop its $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable. Then you can join me in focusing on more pressing business at hand now in Philly: the expected renewal of Comcast's citywide franchises - the first in 15 years. City officials have scheduled six public meetings for this week as they start negotiating. It's your chance to speak up.

Does the national news matter to the deal Mayor Nutter and City Council should be pushing to get - or to people in the hundreds of other towns nearby with Comcast franchises also due to come up for all-but-certain renewal? It could, which is why it's important to consider what it does and doesn't mean.

To be fair, some of last week's cheers were a bit over the top.

"Ding dong, the deal is dead!" sang the Huffington Post. Mashable shared this Tweet: "Two evil superpowers blinked today in the face of challenges from the Obama administration: Iran and Comcast."

Still, it's hardly surprising that some folks demonize Comcast, given its size, its ever-rising prices, and its frustrating service flubs. But whether you're a friend or a critic, you should recognize that the Time Warner deal's demise is mostly an embarrassing sting, not an injurious blow. In case you missed it, Wall Street barely blinked - a telling signal that it either counted the deal out or didn't much want it anyway.

Here are five key things to keep in mind - especially as the Philly renewal unfolds:

We're still in the frying pan. Thanks to the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast won't grow or gain more market power by buying its not-quite-rival - a takeover that, as Comcast executive David L. Cohen argued last year, didn't threaten competition because, guess what, cable companies don't tend to try to compete with one another.

But it's as powerful as it was a week ago - part of a cable status quo many recoil against.

Philly is actually rather lucky: Thanks to Verizon's FiOS, due to reach the whole city by next February, many of us have a second option if we want both pay TV and broadband, still a national rarity. And recent news may make us luckier still: Verizon's new Custom TV plan looks like a serious challenge to cable's overpriced channel bundles - so much so that Disney, owner of both ESPN and 6ABC, last week ordered the local station not to run Verizon's ads.

The whole cable business model was anticompetition before, and it remains so now - even if our local duopoly is bearing a little competitive fruit. Kudos to the FCC and Justice Department for keeping it from getting worse. But what's most amazing - and telling about the power of crony capitalism - is that so many "experts" expected a wink and nod instead.

This is about broadband. A post-merger Comcast would have controlled nearly 6 in 10 broadband households. Satellite services can't provide it, and hopes that new competitors would appear largely look like a quest for leprechauns.

It's increasingly obvious that broadband is essential as a utility to 21st-century America - that's why the FCC tightened its oversight last year to protect Net neutrality. Nutter is right to demand more affordable access here - where broadband penetration is third-lowest of any large U.S. city.

But pay TV still matters. That's especially true here, one of the rare places where local sports still aren't available on satellite services. That's something Nutter should aim to fix - perhaps by pushing Comcast to lower its price for Philly SportsNet. Let's free the Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers from Comcast's tight grip.

Defeat? Maybe just a retreat. Public Knowledge's senior vice president Harold Feld suggests Comcast's decision to back down may have been strategic, to keep knowledge of its practices out of the public record - a record that would have ballooned with an antitrust challenge or FCC hearings.

What might those have disclosed? More allegations of how Comcast wields market power, Feld says. Content owners have complained, for instance, that Comcast bars them from offering programs or movies on streaming services that would bypass pay TV.

"Part of Comcast's incentive to walk away now is that it all stays in the black box," he says.

What does that suggest here? Cohen himself opened the door to data demands, when he complained that a 2013 survey relied on customers' memories for issues such as how long Comcast keeps them on hold when the city could have asked for "objective, verifiable data."

That's what the city should demand. Hannah Sassaman, of West Philly's Media Mobilizing Project, suggests asking how much Comcast pays in various taxes - and how much it avoids via exemptions. Topping my list: how much customers pay each month, and how many still do so. The survey suggested large numbers have dropped Comcast largely because of high prices.

With expanding broadband as a goal, the city should also ask how many people currently get Internet Essentials, Comcast's bargain service aimed at poor families - and how many have applied but been turned down.

The franchise is a contract to use city infrastructure and rights-of-way. Comcast has cold, hard answers to those pesky questions such as customers' average time on hold - including as complaints recently spiked. Why not demand those, too?

The FCC must do more. Chairman Tom Wheeler is moving in the right direction, with efforts to foster muni broadband and a proposed extension of program rights to streaming services, not just cable and satellite providers.

Feld says our "atrocious state of competition in cable and broadband didn't happen overnight." It won't get fixed overnight - or at the bargaining table here. But right now, for once, cable's critics have the wind at their backs.

215-854-2776 @jeffgelles