Congress Turns Up The Heat on FCC's Chairman 148
Fletch writes "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin could be in for an uncomfortable spring, as House Energy Committee Chair John Dingel (D-MI) has requested a truckload of FCC paperwork relating to some controversial decisions Martin has made. Those include the FCC's reversal on the a la carte cable issue and newspaper-television cross-ownership restrictions. 'This request has got to be turning the FCC completely upside down. Significantly, it appears to reflect a bipartisan discontent with Martin's performance. Democrats and some Republicans are upset over his recent move to relax one of the agency's key media ownership rules, as well as the rushed manner in which he handled the matter late last year. Other Republicans dislike what they see as Martin's persecution of the cable industry, especially Comcast.' The Committee originally announced its intention to investigate the FCC in January."
Congress turns up heat? (Score:2, Informative)
Nothing short of removing power from both congress and the FCC will keep these jokers from leeching from the public.
How it reads to me... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Go congress! (did I just say that?) (Score:4, Informative)
Businesweek 12/7/05 [businessweek.com]
While it may be years before any such model is put in place and it's hard to say how the end result will look, a consensus is emerging that some channels would suffer -- if not fall away altogether. Content providers now compel cable operators to offer their niche channels by bundling them with must-haves like ESPN or MTV. Without being bundled into a bigger package, less popular channels such as ESPN Classic and MTV2 could struggle to garner a large enough audience to survive.
So while the consumer can choose what channels he or she wants, the cable company still has to pay for it. It's kind of like if the Grocery Store (cable company) forced you (the consumer) to buy the fruit salad because they bought all their fruit from the same company (TV station) who charges them the same regardless of how many individual pineapples or watermelons they bought. Oh, and noone else is making these varieties of pineapples or watermelons. Now, if you want Papaya (specialty station) you can go to the Grocery Store down the street (Satellite) but they make their fruit salad without the Pineapples which you want.
So the consumer's best option is to get his tropical fruit off someone selling out of his van (P2P), which has it's own set of risks entirely.
Re:Congress turns up heat? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not "only" a symptom... (Score:3, Informative)
We cannot demand that people obey some moral code, when morality is subjective. This is why in the Old Testament there are the 10 Commandments, not the 10 guidelines for moral behavior. This is why Hammurabi's Code existed. This is why the legal system is based on blacklisting disallowed behaviours, not whitelisting appropriate ones.
Unless we specifically forbid certain activities, we must expect that those activities will continue unchecked.
I agree with you that it's ethically indefensible, but can we really expect anything else?
Re:Go congress! (did I just say that?) (Score:3, Informative)
With satellite, you at least have a choice of packages to generally get what you want. In fact, if they don't have what you want, you might want to call them and ask about specific offerings. They used to have special packages that they didn't generally advertise.
The big issue here (AFAIK) isn't the lack of a la carte offerings by the cable companies, but the cost of offering them. This is the part that most people don't seem to want to understand. If you think cable is expensive now, watch what happens when the Congress forces them to offer channel-by-channel packages (which, when it happens, will once again demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences).
Current cable distribution technology doesn't allow for users to pick a few channels and pay that way. The cablecos (and satellite companies, to some extent) have to pay per-subscriber fees to carry many of those channels. These fees are charged differently for different tiers of programming (basic, basic extended, etc), which is why some so-called "premium" channels are only available with certain packages (Note: this is the big issue involved in the dispute the NFL has with cable carries regarding NFL Network).
In order to provide a la carte, the cable companies are going to have to build new user equipment that will provide such a service, or alternately, build new transmission equipment that allows them to select channels for each destination at the source. Now, we both know there is technology available to do this now. But to mass produce it, deliver it, test it, then figure out a way to make sure the customer billing matches their channel choices is going to cost a LOT of money if they're forced to do this. I'm certain that as time progresses, they will come up with ways to do it that they can roll out on a gradual basis.
In the meantime, since you're getting satellite, just cutomize your receiver to display only the channels you want. It's easy to do, allows you to password-block specific channels from your kids, and makes your on-screen guide easier to maneuver. On my receiver, I remove all the shopping, foreign and religious channels (except EWTN, in case I skip mass on Sunday), along with specialty and sports channels I rarely watch. You can bring them all back up with one keypress on the remote, unless you block them, which requires a password.
I know this doesn't make thing cheaper. But a la carte will NOT make cable and satellite bills go down. In fact, I guarantee they'll go way up...and everyone will be screaming at John Dingle to do something. At which point, he'll probably ask who the idiot was who pushed a la carte on everyone was.