The battle over controlling cable content is heating up, with conservative Christian groups leading the fight to pressure the FCC to impose regulations on cable operators that will allow subscribers to pick and choose which channels are piped into their home.
This proposal is gaining acceptability with the masses, because of the way it's framed.
All of those wonderful cable channels we've grown addicted to - MTV, Comedy Central, ESPN, CNN (ugh), and their competitors - would never have reached the audiences they have that made them successful if they had not been available in basic cable subscription packages.
Cable is a service that allows subscribers to tap into the thousands of choices in programming content much like the internet gives us access to everything we could possibly care to see. The content is produced and paid for by advertising revenues, not our subscriber fees.
Our subscriber fee is merely the cost we pay for the privilege to access the content over and above that which is available via broadcast channels.
Right now they're winning the spin frame by claiming we should have a right to opt out of access to certain channels that we don't want, and justifying it by saying that we're paying for programming we don't want, when we are NOT paying for that programming, advertisers are.
We need to turn the argument back around to preserve cable as a service that allows access to the sea of content that is being produced with advertising dollars by cable networks, much the same way that the internet gives us access to whatever human creativity can concoct.
Remember, without channel surfing, those groundbreaking entertainment networks such as MTV, ESPN, Comedy Central, TBS and others would never have reached the audiences they did to make them successful. Those days, and the resulting opportunities for new networks to gain market share, are coming to an end if the conservatives win this battle. We can't let that happen.
Also, if cable in its current incarnation falls, that lays solid groundwork for them to go after the internet next.