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Bill to Bring A La Carte, Indecency Regs to Cable
An anonymous reader writes "A bill introduced this week would force cable operators to offer à la carte cable and so-called family-tiers of service. Those opting for à la carte programming would get refunds on their cable bill, but the legislation would also extend broadcast indecency standards to cable and satellite TV for the first time: 'In accordance with the indecency and profanity policies and standards applied by the [FCC] to broadcasters, as such policies and standards are modified from time to time, not transmit any material that is indecent or profane on any channel in the expanded basic tier of such distributor except between 10pm and 6am.' As Ars points out, 'With the parental controls built into every television set, set-top box, and DVR being sold these days, the need for such legislation seems questionable at best. Unlike broadcast television, which is available to anyone with a TV and an antenna, people subscribe to and pay for cable/satellite.'"
The sections talking about a la carte service are there to distract people from the real meat of the legislation, allowing the FCC to censor cable channels. Currently the FCC's able to censor over the air broadcasters quite well, restricting the information that they are allowed to push to their viewers. They do not have this ability with cable channels and I suspect that they desperately want it.
Just think about it, over the air broadcasters are unable to show or talk about certain things (eg. horrors of war, human sexuality). As a result, it becomes much easier to control what people believe about certain things. Cable channels do not have this sort of restriction, so they're able to get this information out to their subscribers/viewers/listeners.
If the FCC is allowed to censor cable and satellite (and Internet?) content along with traditional television and radio broadcasts, then they will become the information gatekeepers for the majority of Americans.
At most, that argument would allow for state governments to regulate content, the federal government still has no authority to do this.
Really? Let's look at the facts. The last big first amendment issue the supreme court looked at was the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. In a 5-4 decision, the supreme court decided that it was ok to abridge the first amendment.
Who were the 5 first amendment haters? Breyer, Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, and Ginsburg, the 4 liberal, 1 wishy washy jurists.
Justice Thomas (perhaps you consider him extreme right leaning?) dissented, calling it the "most significant abridgment of the freedoms of speech and association since the Civil War."
Who do you agree with?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You don't necessarily pay for those channels. They are bundled by the studio/broadcaster that owns them into one purchase. The more channels a studio has, the more advertisements they can sell.
Think of Nickelodeon or Disney. They have their main channels. They pay money to either get, or produce shows for those main channels. Does Nicktoons, and ToonDisney pay that same money again to rerun them? No, but the studio does get another channel to sell advertisement slots on. The more impressions, the more money they bring in.
So, we go a-la-carte, no one buys Nicktoons, because they want all the programming, not just the cartoons, on Nickelodeon. No one watches Nicktoons, advertisers won't buy slots on Nicktoons, soon, it goes away. The extra revenue generated by another channel that really didn't have much expense is lost. Nickelodeon now costs more to recoup those loses in order to cover their production costs.
TV Viewers need to understand, it's not the cable company that's forcing them to get every channel offered under one package. Whoever owns a particular channel requires the cable provider to bundle them all together, and asks for a specific amount per viewer for all of the channels together.
If they are forced to allow cable providers to offer them individually, each channel you want will end up costing more overall than if you just got then entire bundle to begin with.
Well, of course they are. Sundance is owned by Showtime/CBS, Universal/NBC and Robert Redford. IFC is owned by Cablevision.
My general rule of thumb is, if I've heard of 'em, they're not small enough to be indy.
IFC is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, Inc. which is a conglomerate that also owns AMC among other things.
Sundance Channel is owned jointly by Showtime, Universal Studios, and Robert Redford.
The TV license is per household not per television.