Cable TV and indecency

Broadcasting & Cable point to the developing indecency battle between cable TV owners and Congress, who just can't get off their current decency purge of the media, and are vowing to bring the industry under the same indecency restrictions as broadcasters. Key committee chairs in both Senate and Congress seem set on pushing the issue.

“I think we can put restrictions on cable, and I intend to tell them that,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens told an appreciative crowd of TV and radio-station executives in Washington for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual state leadership conference last week.

Stevens' comments were echoed by his House counterpart, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). Both men said their viewers, particularly children, do not differentiate between traditional broadcast channels and pay-TV channels when they scroll through program guides, and there is no reason for Washington to make that distinction either.

The NAB, the lobbying group for broadcasters, is "thrilled," while the less-influential National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) is not so happy. The cable industry's traditional best friends have been the courts, who consistently have held that less stringent regulations apply to cable than over-the-air TV. Let's see how long that continues.