Coalition Calls on Congress to Make Companies Offer Consumers Cable Choice
by Bill Fancher
July 25, 2005
(AgapePress) - Twenty-five organizations have sent a letter to commerce committees in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives urging lawmakers to require cable companies to provide channel choice to viewers. Citizens for Community Values president Phil Burress told a Washington, D.C. press conference that "cable choice" is needed to protect American families. The importance of this issue is escalating, he says, because parents and other pro-family consumers are currently "forced to take channels that we don't want in our homes, and we're having to guard the TV the way we would the front door to stop intruders from assaulting our children."
The coalition of concerned groups is asking Congress to intervene and require cable and satellite providers to establish a la carte pricing so viewers can pick and choose what kind of programming they want to come into their homes. Dan Isett of the Parents Television Council says this action is long overdue.
"Cable choice should be at the top of the national dialogue in terms of what is allowed into the home," Isett says. That dialogue should involve how "to give consumers and parents a choice [concerning] not only what they bring into the home, but also what they subsidize with their cable payment," he adds.
The coalition maintains that allowing a la carte cable pricing will give parents more control over what comes into their homes. Isett believes pro-family consumers will appreciate that control, as well as the idea of not being forced to accept material they do not like or approve of in order to get the programming they do want.
Bill Fancher, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
