Word: fcc
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...Consumer-advocate groups are back on the warpath this week after a new FCC survey reports that in 2000 - the first full year since Congress ended price controls on cable TV bills in March 1999 - the average monthly cable bill went up 5.8 percent. That's a good sight higher than the 3.7 percent rate of inflation, and it has people wondering: Where's that deregulatory magic...
...This was the first year that satellite-TV services, which lack cable's need for local infrastructure and thus are able to enter markets at will, exerted "a small but statistically significant influence on the demand for cable service," the FCC said. But that didn't slow down cable bills' rise - and satellite-TV providers had the worst rate hikes...
...Which is the reality that Michael Powell, George W. Bush's new FCC chairman (and Colin's son) will have to sell the public over his tenure. Powell took the job last week with a fiery speech about deregulating pretty much everything you can think of, and on principle he's got the right idea. Free up the market, and you get better stuff for less money...
...Journalist Peter Lance, who first raised these allegations in his book "The Stingray," likened the potential fallout to the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s. The rigging of shows like "Twenty-One" led to national disillusionment and the establishment of FCC rules forbidding the fixing of competitions. But not only does this not yet look like a Charles Van Doren-scale shocker, I'm not sure whether one is even possible anymore. One reason has to do with the kinds of game shows in prime time nowadays. The other has to do with the people watching them...
...What's more, the FCC rules that the quiz-show scandals produced were meant to restore a compact of trust between the public and broadcasters. But that leaky raft sailed long ago. In fact, polls show that most viewers already assumed that "Survivor" was fixed. Viewers today are better aware of the Heisenberg effect than your average sociology professor a generation ago; not only do they believe that the shows are set up and edited for dramatic TV - viewing between the lines is part of the sport of watching. Rules are rules, of course, but if Survivorgate ends up disillusioning...