Senator: Decency Rules Should Apply Pay TV, Radio

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said on Tuesday he would push to apply broadcast decency standards to subscription television and radio services like cable and satellite.

"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local television affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air" broadcasters.

Stevens told reporters afterward that he would push legislation to apply the standards to cable and satellite radio and television.

Federal regulations bar broadcast television and radio stations from airing obscene material and restrict indecent material, such as sexually explicit discussions or profanity, to late-night hours when children are less likely to be watching or listening.

But so far those restrictions have not applied to subscription television and radio services offered by companies like Comcast Corp. or Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., which recently signed shock jock Howard Stern.

Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by the cable industry that Congress does not have the authority to impose limits on what they air.

"If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved legislation to raise fines to $500,000 from $32,500 on television and radio broadcasters that violate indecency limits. The Senate has legislation pending to increase fines as well.

But neither bill has provisions that would extend indecency restrictions to cable and satellite services.

No one is forcing me to subscribe to XM, however neither Sirius nor XM are paragons of decency. So if I want to listen to any broadcast in the vast FM voids in which I am wont to travel it will be XM

There is this new technology, they call it an "MP3 Player". I've heard it plays the music you want, when you want.

There is a public cost to the private transactions people make with programming suppliers, which results in aggregate in pervasive cultural degredation. The steadily declining standards of decency can only be solved in aggregate, hopefully by broadcast associations, but in the last extremity by Congress.

And here I thought you were a Conservative.

You want to know why we have "steadily declining standards of decency"? I'll tell you why - poor parenting. It has nothing to do with Howard Sterns saying the f-word, it has nothing to do with Janet Jackson's breast.

It has everything to do with the pathetic job that so many parents in this country are doing, in raising their children.

Blaming TV or radio, that's a cop-out in the extreme. That's wanting to pretend that every parent is a great parent, and that it's that it's a bunch of electronic devices corrupting their children.

My friend, you can have Congress intrude even more into our lives, and tell us even more what we can or can't watch or listen to, but it won't stop or reverse this country's moral decay. Only good parenting can do that.

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