uh, isn't that bombing cambodia in order to kill vietnamese?

[acroyear]

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Outraged by how salacious programs on radio and network television have become in recent months, lawmakers vowed on Wednesday to look at indecent shows on cable and satellite channels.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain urged cable and satellite companies to offer parents the ability to pick and choose what channels they get so they can protect their children from violence, sex and profanity, an idea that resonated with other lawmakers and regulators.

Ok, so because on air television is so bad, we're going to further regulate cable.

Not counting the fact that 1) parents DO have the ability to restrict which channels can be watched, 2) parents DO already decide whether or not to have pay channels, and 3) parents can password protect pay-per-view as well. Finally, cable companies are mostly local (and satallite systems have local-aware capabilities) so they can already black-out content deemed inappropriate for the community obscenity standards (indecency is another issue, and is PROTECTED SPEECH YOU JACKASSES so KNOCK IT OFF). They use the same technology to enforce sports-related blackouts.

Its already all in there...and in addition, most digital set-top boxes are already V-Chip aware, so even if your TV doesn't have the V-Chip, the cable box can handle it for you.

Cable customers already know and have control over what they are and aren't getting, and the ultimate solution (ditch the cable) is always an option. On air broadcasts are the things out of people's control and solely in the hands of the networks and affiliates.

Besides, isn't McCain supposed to be solving our Intelligence crisis yet? Or is he part of the problem to begin with?

Comments

Duh, I keep forgetting the Carollinian Logic

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

These are the same idiots who went to war with someone because he was a threat to peace.

[sunflwgal.livejournal.com]

my first thought was duh...parents have all the rights :) and wow...modern technology aids in that...and what ever happen to freedom of choice? Parents can CHOOSE to not buy cable :P

*rolls eyes*

next they will be telling us how to be "appropiate parents" oh wait....we have that already too. Social Services.

Thus, the Newt Gingrinch fear...

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

That "Family Values" their way will be mandated.

the result being, of course, that anybody still married to their first wives will have to divorce them immediately, because about 60-70% of the Family Values crowd of the 90s, including Reagon, Dole, and Newt, were all on their 2nd marriage.

this is the "sanctity" of marriage?

Re: Thus, the Newt Gingrinch fear...

[thewhitedragon.livejournal.com]

There is no sanctity of marriage -- shows like "Joe Millionaire", "Joe Average", "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" and the rest of the shite that they put on the ole' book toob make sure of that. I'm not even going to bring up a certain celebrity's "I still believe in the sanctity of marriage" nonsense after she got married because she "wanted to cut loose" and promptly had it annulled within 72 hours.

I'm sorry, but the sanctity of marriage is a practical joke, in my humble opinion. You get it played on you by smug married's and then you play it on some naive non-married's so that they become the victim and they (being the newly created undead smug married's) in turn play it one someone else...

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

As a disclaimer, I'll say that I haven't researched this, I'm just thinking out loud here...

I know that in some areas, broadcast television is nearly non-existant. I have cousins who get exactly one broadcast station with decent reception. Certainly, going without TV and the info/entertainment it provides is an option. Or they can use a dish system, or (I'm not sure it's available there) cable.

You mention that there are a number of controls available for cable/dish systems. But how universal are they? Are they a feature that Comcast offers in this area, but maybe other companies/areas don't? We are in one of the most tech-advanced regions in the country, and not everybody has access to the features we "enjoy," and smaller non-Comcast companies may be less inclined to implement them without Congressional mandate. But like I said, I haven't researched this.

Personally, I'd like to think that parents should be sufficiently watchful of their kids, sufficiently responsible, sufficiently parent-like, to not need Congress to help them raise their kids. If the kids are watching porn, it's the parents' fault, not Congress'.

Re:

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

comes as free menus included in DirectTV. Which is available nationwide, and to more areas than cable is (witness that the Satellite Dish is the state flower of West Virginia).

We already use it to screen out the pay per view channels and the sports channels for the most part (we do have a filter just for sports that we never watch. At least, I never watch).

I can't say anything for the smaller cable stations... And since I was without cable for 27 years of my life (my goodness, someone who wasn't raised on cable, go fig), I can't say what kinds of controls are on older systems. But any of the newer systems will have them, gratis.

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Um, actually, unless you pay extra $$ you can't just randomly set up to not allow kids to watch certain channels on cable. At least I couldn't with my old TV.. I *think* there's a way to do it with the new one, but someone (yes, I know who, and it wasn't me) managed to toss out the manual within a week of getting the thing.

Not that it's an issue right now... mostly... as there isn't a lot on during the day that I'd keep my kids away from that they're interested in. (And earlier on I bought them a "Wee-mote" that is limited to 5 channels and the one to switch to the VCR... which was handy when they didn't know their favorite channels .. 3 PBS, Nick, and Animal Planet (which has been replaced by Disney now))

Then again, it'd be even better if it could be programmed to allow access only to certain channels, and to a subset of those only during certain hours of the day (I really don't care for the "after school" trash on Nick... and Disney's only a smidgen better).

Requiring the cable companies to make something available to parents at no additional cost might not be something that was totally wrong... or that would trigger the V-chip more reliably (I've been told that there are quite a few shows out there that slide under the V-chip radar for certain age groups that probably shouldn't).

And no, I don't have anything of the sort on... other than a quick by-pass of channels like QVC... more for our benefit than theirs :-)

Re:

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

I know that our system has it buried deep in the menu system, but it's there. Possibly buried deep in the menu system so the average kid won't find it (true, an intelligent child might still find it). You can screen out what channels can and can't be watched on a regular basis (and we actually have four different settings, one that has all the channels, one that has "the usual" channels, one that has just music, and one that has just sports. I think. I usually only have it set to "the usual". :) And yes, we preset which "usual" channels are the ones we want to watch. Oh, and on all four filters, we have the pay per view channels screened out. We'll never watch them anyway, so why watch several screens worth of channels of the same movies scroll by on the guide?

It's part of the menu system, and costs nothing to implement.

I don't know how it might work on everyone's system, but it's just fine for us. When we eventually have kids, we'll probably take one of the filters and call it "kids", and only have the channels we don't mind the kids watching on it (and I'm not about to screen out the health and discovery channels... If they see it as part of a health documentary or a discovery documentary, well, it's at least educational, even if it is "do it like they do it on the discovery channel").

Oh, but it will screen out Skinemax. ;) Then again, by then we may have gotten rid of premium channels altogether. :) (crossing fingers)

Re:

[cozit.livejournal.com]

If you're talking cable box... we don't have one, ever since they started charging even *more* for that... more than 5 years now. I know our TV doesn't have such a creature. You can cancel out some channels altogether, but it doesn't cancel them out if you actually key in the number.

And we just bought the thing last summer... so it's not an old tv.

Then again... we're looking into DirectTV or something similar... Comcast has priced itself *so* far up that even with the discount that comes with having the cable modem it'd be cheaper for us to switch (even if keeping the connection for the computers).

Re:

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

It was cheaper and better for us to keep the DirectTV when we got cablemodem, rather than switch to cable.

Re:

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Is the DirectTV keeping you guys happy? I keep hearing more bad than good, though at a guess, most of the good just doesn't get said. (oh, and I just e-mailed your yahoo)

Re:

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, we have no issues with DirectTV. Our biggest problem with them is when the weather gets REALLY nasty, the signal cuts out. Few and far between, really. And we have an extensive enough DVD collection that it doesn't really bother us when it does. ;)

WEll, unless we're in the middle of a show. Nothing like being in the middle of Law and Order, they're about to figure out who the killer is likely to be, and the satellite signal cuts out. *smirk* Usually comes back within ten minutes. Doesn't do us much good if it's nine minutes before the hour when the signal cuts out. *chuckle*

I had bigger problems with Comcast when we lived in the apartment. Constantly cut out and gave us really sucky signal. And when the signal cut out altogether, usually took us at least six hours to get it back, instead of a few minutes. They finally gave us six months worth of free cable because we threatened to switch to Dish Network, we'd had so many problems from it.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Cox cable, fairfax, not comcast (which is arlington).

[kiltboy]

Having been to a foreign country or two, and having seen what's on their tube, what I've seen so far is pale by comparison. Alyssa Milano topless on The Outer Limits (very nice, by the way), stripper competitions in Barcelona, etc. I've seen full nudity on comercials. Here, we got to see a semi-covered up boob on the Halftime show. Big freakin' deal. We'll show the Govenator blowing up all manner of things and folks, but the human body is off limits? Well, I guess this shouldn't surprise me that much, seeing as how we were partially founded by Puritans, and have elected Puritans (who keep having affairs?) to watch over us, and keep us safe from things which might harm us. We're only the people who voted for them; what could we possibly know about what's good for us?

Kids go to what their not supposed to. Period. If it's taboo, it must be better than what I'm allowed to watch. Mom and Dad watch it, so how bad could it be? I didn't have life barred from me as a kid. It was explained when it happened, so I knew the context, why it was right or wrong, and we got on with life. Big deal.

Oh, wait a minute. I think I've just asnwered my own point: if we spend time being PARENTS, kids usually don't turn out to be morally screwed up, but that does require us to actually spend time being PARENTS. And there's the rub, isn't it? No many folks today spend time being parents anymore. Park the kid in front of the TV and he won't be in my hair for a while.

What? Little Jimmy saw a boob on tv? That's not what I want him watching. So rather than be a PARENT, and explain things to him, I'll just get someone else to do the job for me. Then if the kids turn out to be monsters, it isn't my fault. It the stuff they put on tv. Its the video games, it's the music he listens to, it's the magazines he reads. I shouldn't have to be a PARENT, that stuff just shouldn't be there for him to see. Sure, adults who know better will still want to see it, but we have to idiot proof the whole damned world because I'm too busy to be bothered to be a PARENT.

Maybe I'm disillusioned, but it seems to me that the cure to 98% of societal ills begins at home. 'Course, I could be misinformed.