One of the ways that Roku has set itself apart from its competitors (and one of the reasons why an independent company has managed to take the lead from Google, Apple and Amazon) is that Roku basically takes on all comers. If you have an app for a niche channel, chances are you can get it onto the Roku Channel Store.That allows niche content owners access to a much broader audience, where people who are interested in anything from yoga and gardening to documentaries and anime (or documentaries about anime) can find a channel that matches their interest.Roku’s costs are fairly minimal—whatever time and effort it takes to upload a thumbnail for the channel and some screenshots, plus whatever tech is needed to integrate the stream into Roku’s system. The upside is that Roku can take a percentage of ad revenue or subscription fees from its users. It’s a good business model and it’s also a good social model: rather than limiting access to a few large players, the way its competitors do, Roku levels the playing field for small niche content providers, giving them access to a much broader audience.That’s important right now from a fairness-in-media standpoint as the clear trend is for the MVPDs to integrate the Big 3 streaming services—Netflix, Amazon and Hulu—into their ecosystems. Comcast recently reached an agreement with Netflix to do so and deals with other MVPDs and Hulu and Amazon are not far behind.This essentially undermines the entire theory behind net neutrality, as it takes the Big 3 off the open web, integrating them into the MVPDs set top box-based ecosystem which gives them a tremendous advantage against all future competitors. It’s not that they’ll have a faster bitrate or more stable connection, it’s that they’ll be integrated into the program guide as just another network, and that solidifies their dominance far more than any technology based favoritism ever could.So what’s the solution?Open up the MVPDs VOD offerings so that they include just about all comers. The costs would be no different than Roku’s—some server space and some program guide integration. The upside would be similar too—the MVPDs would take a cut of the ad or subscription revenue.Will it makes them hundreds of millions of dollars? Probably not. Most niche networks operate on fairly slim profit margins. But it will help democratize access to content and allow viewers to access all their video from a single source—it’s easy to see the MVPDs including MCN content as well as branded content verticals in these same VOD offerings. It’s a good play for the MVPDs and allows them to expand their content offerings, providing both short form and long form along with an almost YouTube-esque array of choices. (A much improved Search and Discovery engine would be needed to make this a success by surfacing all that niche content, but the MVPDs need better search and discovery anyway, particularly once TV Everywhere becomes more real.)While this seems like an easy option and sort of a no-brainer, there is a potential downside, at least from a societal point of view: while opening up VOD democratizes access—everyone is now on the same playing field— it has the unfortunate side effect of reinstalling the single gatekeeper, one company that determines what gets seen and what doesn’t.One way around that could be an FCC ruling that requires MVPDs to give all networks  access to their VOD platform unless they can show that it’s obscene or offensive. But that is a slippery slope—one person’s offensive is another’s entertainment, and, as the old analogy goes, what’s to prevent someone from saying that a speech by a mainstream Democratic or Republican candidate is offensive.The better answer to this problem is more competition, and fortunately that seems to be coming in the form of virtual MVPDs like Hulu and Sony Vue that are not tied to any single provider and are able to create a national footprint. That will ensure that there are multiple options and take power away from the gatekeepers.And taking power away from the gatekeepers has, after all, been the promise of the internet from Day One. 

TV[R]EV is written, curated and incubated by the BRaVe Ventures team. Find TV[R]EV on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on the TV[R]EVOLUTION