Page 24 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

À La Carte Cable Pr c ng |

pricing. However, the Center for Digital Democracy, an organization committed to diversity
in the Internet broadband era, has implied that with Time Warner as a major investor, Sí TV’s
opposition to à la carte supports their corporate sponsor rather than television diversity. But
the broad support for the Alliance from Latino organizations including the Hispanic Fed-
eration, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and the National Council of
La Raza indicates that opposition to à la carte pricing is not simply pro–cable industry.

In reaction to this opposition, the House Committee abandoned the amend-
ment and asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to study the
potential impact of à la carte. In the spring and summer of 2004, civil rights
organizations representing communities of color implored the FCC to dismiss
the idea that they argued, in the words of the Leadership Conference on Civil
Rights, “could diminish what little diversity is currently on cable and put mi-
nority and women programmers at risk.” Other civil rights organizations op-
posing à la carte included the League of United Latin American Citizens, the
NALEO Education Fund, Allianza Dominicana, the National Hispanic Policy
Institute, the Hispanic Federation, the NAACP, the National Urban League,
the National Conference of Black Mayors, the National Coalition of Black Civil
Participation, the National Congress of Black Women, the Minority Media and
Telecommunications Council, and the National Asian Pacific American Legal
Consortium. Women’s organizations also united in opposition, including the
Sexuality Information and Education Council, the Global Fund for Women,
the Feminist Majority, American Women in Radio and Television Inc., and the
National Council of Women’s Organizations. Geraldine Laybourne, co-founder
of Oxygen, strongly opposed the measure, arguing that her channel targeting
young women viewers would never have launched under à la carte pricing.
Also in opposition were fiscally conservative organizations such as Citizens
for a Sound Economy, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Unlike
their social conservative counterparts who supported à la carte as a means to
insulate families from television sex and violence, these conservatives categori-
cally opposed any government regulations. As the Cato Institute put it in its
FCC filing, “This debate really comes down to the question of whether govern-
ment should preempt an industry’s preferred (and quite successful) business
model” (for a list of comments from à la carte opponents see http://www.media.
espn.com/MediaZone/PressKits/NCTA/quotes.htm).

ThE FCC’s rEsPonsE
In July 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton released a report commissioned by the
National Cable & Telecommunications Association supporting these groups’ as-
sertions that mandated à la carte and themed groupings of channels, such as
a family-friendly tier, would reduce program diversity and raise subscription
rates for those who purchased nine or more channels (see http://www.ncta.com/
pdf_files/Booz_Allen_a_la_Carte_Report.pdf). Under the direction of then
FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who supported free-market principles, the FCC