NCTA Plan: Allow Limited Regulation

[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
The cable industry would agree to regulation of its most-popular programming tiers for indecency -- on condition that any federal legislation governing its content for profanity or sexual behavior wouldn't take effect until after the courts had ruled on the law's constitutionality. The proposal, endorsed by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association leadership, could lead to the Federal Communications Commission's policing the content of basic and expanded-basic channels for the first time in cable's half-century of history. Currently, the only media whose content is monitored for indecency are broadcast radio and broadcast television, on the basic grounds that they employ public airspace and are universal. Basic and expanded basic are the cable home of scores of networks, both regional and national. Some, like FX and MTV, have come under assault from the Parents Television Council for salacious content. For business and political reasons, the NCTA has concluded that allowing regulation on basic channels for indecency would be the least disruptive to the financial interests of cable system operators. Alternatives include encouraging customers to buy programs a la carte or in small chunks of channels, such as family tiers. But such an approach would undermine the sale of expanded-basic service as a package, breaking up the all-you-can-eat cable bill into smaller fees levied for individual portions of programming. That could strike at the heart of how cable programming is sold today. The NCTA also wants to see the indecency fight come to a conclusion so the industry can focus on larger telecommunications issues, such as whether cable systems should be neutral carriers of Internet services; how franchises to provide video programming in communities across the country should be awarded; who pays what into the federal Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes communication service to rural areas; or whether Internet protocol-based voice services should be regulated.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6286832.html
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