The Platform in Your Living Room
Over the last few decades, antitrust scholars and practitioners have scrutinized the role of platforms—particularly intermediaries—in the internet economy. Many intermediary platforms also compete in the markets they facilitate. That dual role raises familiar concerns about self-preferencing and the risk that a firm may advantage its own products or services.
Regulators have focused primarily on large technology firms that develop mobile operating systems, app stores, and online marketplaces. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) imposes obligations on statutorily defined “gatekeepers.” In the United States, Congress has floated parallel proposals, including the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the Open App Markets Act (OAMA). Commentators have dissected these measures at length, often faulting their thin treatment of consumer effects and their break from traditional economic analysis of allegedly anticompetitive conduct.
Video markets have likewise drawn scrutiny for decades. Broadcast-ownership caps, retransmission-consent rules, and streaming mergers remain live policy flashpoints as consumers migrate to streaming as a primary viewing mode. Fights over market definition and consumer welfare persist, illustrated by the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery–Netflix transaction and consolidation involving broadcasters Tegna and Nexstar.
The television itself has escaped comparable attention.
For most of its history, the television was straightforward hardware—a display for external video inputs. Sets bundled broadcast receivers and ports for cable boxes, gaming consoles, DVD and Blu-ray players, and other peripheral devices.
That paradigm has shifted. Smart TVs—internet-connected sets that host downloadable media apps—now dominate the market. Aside from periodic litigation over user-privacy practices, regulators have largely left Smart TV platforms outside the platform-governance frame. That omission may prove temporary as the sector expands.
Smart TV platforms deliver many of the same procompetitive benefits seen in other digital intermediaries. Vertical integration across the television technology stack enables original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to cut retail prices and improve the precision and quality of television advertising.