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FCC Head Supports Ala Carte Cable

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-little-of-this-a-little-of-that dept.

MikeyTheK writes "PC Magazine Reports that Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC, supports ala carte cable. In a letter to several minority groups on Wednesday, Martin said "While I believe all consumers would benefit from channels being sold in a more a la carte manner, minority consumers, especially those living in Spanish speaking homes, might benefit most of all,". He goes on to argue "Cable companies act as gatekeepers into the programming allowed by the expanded basic cable package, preventing independent content producers from reaching viewers,", citing the example of Black Family Television, which was forced to go online-only because cable operators refused to carry it, even after it reached 16 million homes."

3 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Populist crap. by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: -1, Troll

    Cable companies should say "fine". First channel costs what cable currently costs, the rest are free. The biggest cost to the cable cos isn't carrying all those channels, it's the infrastructure. Does this idiot think that people should be able to buy 1/20th of the channels they have and pay 1/20th the price? It's ridiculous.

  2. Black Family Channel by rossz · · Score: 0, Troll

    If there was a "White Family Channel", the ACLU, the government, and the public in general would demand its removal.

    Just because you ran sed "s/White/Black/g" does not make it ok.

    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
    1. Re:Black Family Channel by eln · · Score: 0, Troll

      There already is a White Family Channel, only it's called TBN and it's really more of a White Christian Fundamentalist Family Channel.

      Do you feel BET should be forced to shutdown? I mean, even if it had watchable programs on it?