Reply #11: don't twist my words [View All]

i am not standing up for martin. That's bs. He has been a disaster as FCC Chairman, has been petty and vindictive and has destroyed the morale of that agency -- the day he leaves the FCC will be a day that I and a lot of other people will cheer quite loudly.

All I've tried to do here is explain what, in fact, has been going on with respect to the a la carte issue. A la carte is a terrible idea and Martin is a rogue official on it. There never was a best time for the repubs to enact a la carte because, as I demonstrated, it never had any real support from repubs or Democrats. Even when the repubs controlled both houses before the 2006 elections, McCain's a la carte amendment lost by 20-2 --- not a single repub on the Senate Commerce Committee supported him. A couple of a la carte bills were introduced while the repubs controlled both houses (one by Lipinski, for example). Not one of those bills garnered a co-sponsorship from anyone in the repub leadership.

And while some RW groups supported a la carte, other parts of the RW fundie base opposed it, including Falwell and crazy man Ralph Reed.

A la carte has become Martin's obsession. One that virtually no other policiticans share. I couldn't care less as to whether its a deeply sincerely felt obsession or just posturing. It doesn't matter since it had no chance of becoming law.

Interestingly, he has turned his attention to a different, but related cause -- he now is pushing to force cable programming networks and broadcasters that own more than one program service (for example, Fox, which owns both broadcast stations and cable networks like Fox News, Fox Sports, FX) and Time Warner (HBO, CNN, Cartoon, etc etc) from requiring cable and satellite distributors from licensing those channels in a "bundle". This so-called "a la carte" proposal would prevent a network like Disney from saying "if you want the right to carry ESPN, you have to agree to carry ESPN classic and ESPN News and ESPNgodonlyknowswhat". Does this play to the fundie? Not that I can see. But it pisses the hell out of the programming companies. Will it get enough support to be adopted? I doubt it.