Posted on 07/31/2006 5:39:33 AM PDT by AT7Saluki
As promised, Republican Tom Osborne (R-Neb.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) Thursday introduced bill that would give cable a "column A,B,C," choice of content regulation.
The bill is billed as the Family Choice act, the preferred term for a la carte cable with groups like Parents Television Council, which backs the legislation and touted it to the press on Wednesday.
...
Multichannel video providers--cable, satellite, telcos--would be required to abide by FCC indecency standards that that currently don't apply to them, or they would have to scramble any channel, without charge, a subscriber doesn't want, except channels that have to be on, like public access and TV STATIONS LOCAL SIGNALS;
(Excerpt) Read more at broadcastingcable.com ...
Bad idea! Cable can not "sneak" into your house like over-the-air broadcast.
The FCC needs to keep its nose out of this one. Cable is a subscription service and does not use the public domain (i.e. a section of the electromagnetic spectrum for broadcast). The customer should be aware of the content being subscribed to so they have the choice to decide if they want to recieve material they may consider offensive. Will the FCC next go after Blockbuster of movie theaters since these are also outside the public domain? Or Netflix becasue that is a DVD subscription service?
The FCC will do what ever it is allowed to do........
The problem here is with these to congressmen and any other who would vote for such an infringement
Once important line in the article: "That said, such a bill has little chance of passage. An a la carte amendment to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee video franchise reform bill was soundly defeated (20 to 2, with the two being the co-sponsors)." This looks more like election year pandering than anything substantial.
So they killed the a la carte initiative? Bummer. I'm being extorted on a monthly basis.
When they say 'scramble a channel without charge', does that mean that I don't have to pay for MTV if I don't want it, or do they scramble it but I still have to pay for it? But the so-called 'family tier' option is their 'out'. All they have to do is make a family tier that excludes the channels people want, and no one will pick it, but they fulfill the requirement. I see the cable lobby has already gotten to this bill and de fanged it. We need true cable choice, with cable competition, and the opportunity to pick and choose the channels we want, and not pay for channels we don't, with groups that make sense, like a 'sports' group, a 'kids programming' group, a 'movies' group, and a learning/science/history 'group.
I couldn't care less.
Agreed - with this caveat: Customers should be able to 'customize' the list of programs they want and not be hostage to the 'packages' offered that includes the channels they DO want, but also ones they don't.
If we really want 'freedom of choice' then we should HAVE freedom of choice./
We need a "my personal choices" group -
Most households would want some kid's programs, some history,etc, some home and gardening, some news -
I agree on that point. I would love to drop all the sports channels. I hear ESPN, and its derivative stations, get a big chunk of my cable bill and I never watch it. And Current TV can go bye-bye, too.
The FCC - how easily it could morph into the Minstry of Truth from Orwell.
The gommint just wants to get its nose into another aspect of life. This is under the guise of "a la carte". Don't believe it. FCC was created because the airwaves are shared and interference is possible without some sort of body that will resolve requests to use the same frequency in the same area.
Beyond that, FCC has gone WAY beyond its powers into a huge burocratic monster that imposed control on speech.
On the surface a la carte sounds good. But you're correct, bills would likely go up instead of down. ESPN charges per cable household, not who's watching. Doubt they'll take a pay cut if CableCo says only X people are ACTUALLY WATCHING. Until providers start selling by bandwidth (like you're power meter - pay for what you use regardless of what it's used for), packaging will remain. I remain convinced, television will one day be like the internet; you choose what you want, when you want.
"The FCC needs to keep its nose out of this one. Cable is a subscription service and does not use the public domain (i.e. a section of the electromagnetic spectrum for broadcast)."
This is not exactly true. Almost all cable channels, except for local channels, are distributed to the cable systems via satellite downlinks. So at some point they do use the "public domain".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.