Dish Has ‘Free Speech TV’ Problem

[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
FCC rules adopted in 1998 that require direct-broadcast satellite carriers to create channel space "for noncommercial programming of an educational or informational nature." OK, that's good. But as the Dish satellite service launches “Dish Family”, it is not including some of these educational/informational channels because their programming includes occasional nudity and some profanity. Whoops. The programming covered by the FCC’s rules must be offered to all satellite subscribers at no additional charge and without any editorial interference from the satellite provider. FCC rules do not address whether family tiers can exclude these channels with programming that would be deemed indecent under FCC rules that apply to local TV stations. To some extent, cable is facing a similar problem. Under the same legislation affecting satellite, cable systems must carry, and subscribers must purchase, local TV stations and public-access channels in the basic tier at the same time they purchase a family tier from Comcast or Time Warner Cable. Indecent programming aired by TV stations and PEG (public, educational and government) channels is beyond the cable system's editorial control. EchoStar's exclusion of educational/informational channels could spark a fight at the FCC. "Yes, I would have a problem with that," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a public-interest law firm that fought at the FCC to reserve 4% of satellite channels for noncommercial channels. Schwartzman said his preference would be to let families decide whether to block a channel. "This is not a complete solution, you understand,” he added. “The way out of it is that DirecTV and Dish have much more effective parental-control devices than cable has in the first place. You can block out on a per-channel basis a lot easier than you can on cable."
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6302544.html?display=Breaking+News
(requires subscription)