By Tom Dorsey
The Courier-Journal

Broadcasters are already running scared over the congressional indecency crusade, but now cable operators are beginning to sweat.

Cable operators have been lying low, letting broadcasters take the heat. The broadcast networks and their affiliates came under attack because their programming uses publicly licensed airwaves that can come into any TV set in any home.

Until recently, it was assumed that cable would escape the campaign because if subscribers are paying for something to come into their homes, they're giving consent for that kind of programming.

New outlook at FCC

Recently, Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell said he didn't think the FCC had the power to regulate cable the same way it did broadcasters. Now he's suddenly discovered it does.

"I don't believe the First Amendment should change channels when it goes from Channel 7 to 107," he told a recent convention of the National Association of Broadcasters convention.

That seems curious to some people who thought the First Amendment was about protecting free speech, not censoring it. But in this election year, politicians of both parties are hopping on the bandwagon to clean up television.

If cable doesn't clean up its act in a hurry, legislation will be introduced to slap the same regulatory restrictions on cable as broadcasters, says Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, head of the House Commerce Committee that oversees the industry. The same rules should apply whether his grandson sees it on free TV, cable or satellite, he told Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

Another congressman points out that right now, if Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction during the halftime show of a football game on CBS on Sunday afternoon, that network could be fined. But if the same thing happened during a Sunday night game on ESPN, the rules wouldn't cover it.

Cable adjusting

The cable industry got the message. Shows are being edited and iffy programming put on hold. Stuff that nobody would have given a second thought six months ago is being cut, one cable producer says.

The most likely offenders on the expanded basic cable, which most people subscribe to, would be channels such as MTV and maybe Comedy Central.

But if the super regulators are saying paying for channels doesn't make any difference, then shows such as The Shield and Deadwood that are on premium channels and others would also have to undergo extreme makeovers.

Never mind that cable operators say anybody can block any channel. Forget that Congress mandated TV sets with V-chips that would black out any series.

The politicians don't want answers; they want a moral, upstanding issue to run on in an election year. Congress wants to treat adults as if they were 8-year-olds. This one-size-fits-all solution is silly and cynical to say the least.

One way to dodge this runaway locomotive would be to put offending channels into a separate tier.

The industry doesn't want to go down that path for lots of reasons, but if it doesn't respond to the current crisis, cable could find itself branded with a scarlet letter by these modern-day Puritans.

The only other alternative would be for the industry to stand up and fight back, but don't count on that. Broadcasting & Cable couldn't get many cable executives to comment on the situation for fear of retaliation by the reformers.