Bring It On, FCC!

by Rick Rockwell

This week, pushed by Congress, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) declared war on cable TV. Well, in a manner of speaking.

Backtrack to 2004: 39 Senators instruct the FCC to study violence on cable television and to issue a report. This week, the FCC finally produced the report and no surprise, the Senate’s Commerce Committee got what it wanted: a blueprint for regulation and ultimately censorship of cable.

Do we really need to give the FCC more work? Are they that bored in their shiny building over on 12th Street in the Southwest quadrant of D.C.?

Certainly, the FCC is doing such a bang-up job when it comes to regulating over-the-air television and radio, why not give them more to do? They’ve cleaned up all the problems with violence on network television, right? Or did I miss something?

There’s something to be said for broadcasters using restraint while borrowing the public airwaves. But cable is different. First, cable and satellite paid to create their own networks, unlike the broadcast airwaves (or as they were once called: the ether), which courts have ruled belong to the public.

Does Congress have the right to lay out new regulations for the vertically-integrated cable industry which could use closer scrutiny? Yes, but this isn’t the way to give consumers more control over the media conglomerates. What this will do is let the federal government mess up cable in the same way it has the regular airwaves, all in the name of family friendly fare. At least the courts have sanely ruled in the past (and likely will in the future too) that consumers who pay for cable in effect give their permission for all the violence and sex that come with cable or satellite television. Paying your bill is your consent that you agree the product is worth it.

So what is all this about if this study results in regulations which are doomed to be set aside by the courts anyway and may not meet a First Amendment challenge to boot? Sure, this will tie the cable conglomerates up in court for years and plenty of lawyers will get work. And perhaps the cable firms will want to pass those legal costs back to consumers, by the way. Torturing the cable firms is not the way to get them to provide better service.

Of course, this is really about politics. Can that be far behind, if it originates in D.C.?

Back in 2004, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the chair of the Commerce Committee and his favorite cable topic is getting the industry to give consumers a choice to pick channels a la carte, instead of using the current tiered system. McCain’s idea actually makes sense. The average consumer regularly views only 16-20 channels but pays for much more. Most solutions to controlling violent content call for instituting an a la carte system. So a potential bill (being drawn up by Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia) is actually a Trojan Horse for McCain’s idea. And by the way this gives him cover with the family values folks in the Republican party, who he has been assiduously courting in the presidential race.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), another presidential candidate, is also a proponent of a la carte and more oversight of cable. He has argued that folks on the religious right can’t abide much of what is cablecast now but they have no choice but to pay for channels they don’t like in the tiered system. How else will they watch The 700 Club, which comes into most homes via cable?

So cable regulation – and ultimately censorship – is really about appealing to conservative voters for politicians in both parties. Nothing like a little pandering for votes while turning bureaucrats from the FCC loose to tamper with your favorite programs. Can you think of a worse solution to fix the ills of television?

(The graphic is from radicalgraphics.org, which offers its material for free.)

politics
television
corporate media
television violence
violence
fcc
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