Cable-package extortion traps families

WASHINGTON — Expanded basic cable television has become a Pandora's box for families. Many parents welcome expanded basic cable because it opens a universe of family-friendly programming — such channels as the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and others.

But to get the family-friendly networks, parents are forced to pay for channels they don't want and that actually make their job as a parent much more difficult. In addition to trying to protect their children from the unsuitable programming on many of the broadcast networks, parents have to try to protect their children from the much more explicit fare on MTV, F/X, Comedy Central and the like.

Everyone I speak with finds something wrong with requiring consumers to pay for a product they don't want, and may even find offensive, to get something that they do want. And our lawmakers are finally listening. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently introduced a bill that would give the power to us, the consumers, not the cable companies.

It would be unthinkable for a magazine publisher to tell you that to get Better Homes and Gardens, you also have to buy a subscription to Playboy. But in effect that's what the cable industry has been forcing subscribers to do. The practice amounts to licensed extortion.

By contrast, newspapers publish material that is not objectionable whether the readers are interested in certain sections of the paper or not. Not everyone reads the sports, lifestyle or economics sections, for example, but if these sections fall into the hands of children, no one is concerned.

Perhaps this is because newspapers produce "hard copy," making it easy to prove that their content is not sewage. Television content is presented and then gone: How does one object to something that others can challenge as simply hearsay?

The Parents Television Council recognized this problem early in its existence. Since 1995 it has maintained a full-time staff that documents every objectionable incident on prime-time broadcast television. The PTC has amassed a collection of thousands of programs; its data are objective and available to anyone for the asking.

Because of the PTC's efforts, consumers are becoming aware that the public airwaves will continue to be barraged with indecent content unless we also address the even more vulgar, even more violent, even more sexually graphic material coming into our living rooms through basic cable (which reaches more than 85 percent of U.S. households).