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.'"

Comments

Will we really save money?

[eharvill]

Or simply lose a lot of cool ("indy") channels that don't get enough sponsorship to survive on their own?

Re:Will we really save money?

[eharvill]

Yes, b/c as *everyone* knows, popular and highly rates shows *must* be good.

Re:Will we really save money?

[daeg]

Actually, I think the opposite may be true. Currently, it is difficult to target a niche audience because you, as a television channel, have to convince broadcasters to add your content to their lineup. It is a risky venture for cable companies. They don't know if their viewers really want the content.

With a la carte, cable companies have little to risk about adding a channel since they can pay for what their customers use. N subscribers makes them pay $N for the channel.

Channels will have to continually produce content for their viewers, too, or customers will sign up for the months when new content is on and cancel afterward, much like many people do with HBO/Shotime/etc. Of course, this can also bring in a new market sector of channels: those that are only on air for a few months out of the year, reducing operating costs and having a very strong profit for the few months they are on air showing good content.

I don't, however, like this getting tied in with even more indecency laws. Laws and indecency have nothing to do with one another, even for broadcasters. If we allowed anything on air and current statiosn suddenly went apeshit and started swearing about the mother fucking fire on main street that caused the anchor to be late for mother fucking work while blaming it on those shithead firemen a new market sector would instantly appear: the moderated, tame, channels. Especially if we had a la carte.

Re:Will we really save money?

[destiny71]

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.

Bwa??

[MagicDude]

Now I'm even more confused. If you can get any channel you want a la carte, then why do you need to impose indecency regs on channels. I could almost see the logic when you had to get Spike and TNT in order to get Nickelodeon for the kids, but now if you can cherry pick the safe channels you specifically want (and as such, pick the not so safe at your discretion), you should do away with the regs and let the market sort out what people are willing to pay for.

I want a'la carte, but

[geekoid]

"extend broadcast indecency standards to cable and satellite TV for the first time: "

the price they want is too high.

So...

[DavidTC]

...when we complained about the FCC's censorship, we were told: Oh, you can get cable if you want uncensored stuff.

And they they started labeling everything and building controls into TVs to filter by rating. That was okay, because they told us, with everything labeled, people could complain less about 'inappropriate' things, because, after all, everything's rated.

Look, we've given those fascist 'think of the children' asshats every damn thing they wanted, and, magically, they always want more. It is trivial to filter content from children at this point, via broadcast or cable. We should be reducing such general restrictions, not adding to them, because we've added specific abilities to filter to end users. There's no logical reason we should be extending restrictions them to cable.

The one conclusion is that they wish to keep such content from adults.

You know what? Media companies need to start labeling everything TV-MA. Everything. All channels, all shows, are now listed as bad as possible. You can either live and operate as an adult when interacting with the TV, or you can not ever watch anything ever again. Your choice.

We tired, God knows we tried, but you fascist assholes either mindbogglingly stupid you can't avoid the carefully labelled content we've made, or deliberately don't want to. We're just going to have to draw the line in the sand, and label everything as 'hardcore porn' so you will shut the hell up. If people want cable, or, hell, wish to purchase a TV, they get handed a form that they have to flip past ten pages of porn to sign, and certify that they consent to have the filthiest things possible beamed directly into their and their children's brain.

Of course, TV would remain the same, with different shows aimed at different audiences, but we'd have a lot less assholes whining about it, because there would be huge clear warnings that 'The following show contains every bad thing on earth. Do not watch it under any circumstances.'

...hey, South Park actually has that warning. Hmmm.

Yes, people pay for cable

[overshoot]

and yes, the sets have "parental controls." However:

• The parents don't use those controls,
• Therefore the Government has to step in For the Sake of the Children!

There are rumors that one reason the parental controls aren't being used is because the parents who want them are also dependent on their children to set them up.

Re:extending standards to HBO

[ScrewMaster]

Would all those great shows like the Sopranos, Sex in the city, Deadwood, etc ever been possible had HBO been worrying whether or not they're hurting all of those beautiful minds in the heartland?

Certainly not, they'd have been too risky.

Matter of fact, this is just another example of a bunch of lawyers (i.e., Congress) creating a lot of makework. That's all this is: yet another Congressional subsidy to the corporate attorney crowd, as if Sarbanes-Oxley and intellectual property (hah!) weren't enough. We're at the point where no company can take a breath (much less create something worthwhile) without having to consult some lawyer and have him pass on the idea. Which he won't, with laws like this on the books, because if he did, he wouldn't be doing his job.

Regarding "decency" laws: what is it about certain people that they feel the need to force their pattern for living upon everyone else? I just want to grab one of these idiots by the throat, shake him a few times, and point out that I'M NOT OFFENDED BY A FEW BAD WORDS, YOU STUPID LITTLE PRICK, I PAY THE DAMN CABLE BILL NOT YOU, AND WORRYING ABOUT WHAT ME OR MY FUCKING KIDS SEE ON THE GODDAMN TELEVISION IS ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NONE OF YOUR GODDAMNED BUSINESS!

"Decency" laws my ass. What we need are laws that make Congress behave decently. I might go for that. But they'd fuck that up too, it's the nature of that particular collective beast. It really is twisted that some of the most amoral individuals in our society are the ones trying to define what is acceptable and "decent" (whatever that actually means) for the rest of us. Still, they do say that hierarchies are like septic tanks: the really big chunks always rise to the top.

And I'm sorry if any of you found this post to be "indecent" but sometimes Congress just torques me into a fucking pretzel. As Lewis Black says, "The only thing STUPIDER than a Republican or a Democrat ... is when these little pricks work together!"