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

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).