{"id":7810,"date":"2006-06-29T12:29:28","date_gmt":"2006-06-29T16:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7810"},"modified":"2006-06-29T12:29:28","modified_gmt":"2006-06-29T16:29:28","slug":"maybe-next-year-a-la-carte-cable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maybe-next-year-a-la-carte-cable\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe next year, a-la-carte cable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to update readers on a low-profile story I’ve been following<\/a>, the Senate Commerce Committee took up a proposal yesterday to allow cable customers to pay only for those channels they actually want. How’d it turn out? The vote wasn’t even close<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cable networks’ advertising sales divisions may be breathing a sigh of relief now that the Senate Commerce Committee rejected a Sen. John McCain proposal that would have forced [tag]cable[\/tag] operators to offer consumers [tag]a la carte[\/tag] programming.<\/p>\n

The 20-2 vote against the provision was part of a day-long effort in working on a video franchise\/telecommunications-reform bill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I explained<\/a> in March, clowns like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were in a genuine panic over this. The FCC says that the average household watches only 17 channels — and apparently, evangelical right-wingers aren’t pulling in the viewers. To help lobby against the per-channel pricing, Robertson’s CBN, Falwell, Benny Hinn Ministries, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, and FamilyNet TV teamed up to save the cable system that helps keep them on the air.<\/p>\n

So, in this sense, [tag]televangelists[\/tag] won yesterday, but I wouldn’t give them too much credit for this one. The reality is, as Media Post explained, “a la carte could have affected billions of cable network advertising dollars by diminishing the number of subscribers for all networks — and thus potential viewership.”<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting issue, though, which I suspect will be back again next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to update readers on a low-profile story I’ve been following, the Senate Commerce Committee took up a proposal yesterday to allow cable customers to pay only for those channels they actually want. How’d it turn out? The vote wasn’t even close. Cable networks’ advertising sales divisions may be breathing a sigh of relief now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}