'Cable a la Carte' Programming Option Could Affect Media Diversity
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 7/21/2004
As part of a broader look at media diversity, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), in partnership with the Alliance for Community Media, sponsored a panel discussion in June entitled "Cable A La Carte: The Beginning of the End for Media Diversity on Cable TV?"Cable a la carte is a system that would allow consumers to buy access to cable through individual channels, as opposed to cable company packages.
Opponents of cable a la carte programming maintain that the system would destroy the sustainability of "niche" networks – stations that cater to a particular interest or demographic, such as minorities or women. They fear that "a la carte" could wipe out existing networks and prevent the entry of new networks into the marketplace.
A recent joint statement by TV One and Si TV says, "Networks like ours, that serve diverse, minority and multilingual interests, would never have been launched in an a la carte world."
LCCR submitted extensive comments on the matter to the FCC in July.
"There is a growing body of evidence that a la carte could diminish what little diversity is currently on cable and put minority and women programmers at risk," LCCR stated. "Indeed, the record is clear that the current system, which is both concentrated in few hands and vertically integrated, has led to an increasingly closed system that has undermined diversity in general and minority ownership in particular."
LCCR said it believes that the current system should be expanded to include more minority-controlled channels on basic and expanded basic tiers.
"Without knowing definitively that an a la carte model would improve diversity, these steps are preferred to replacing the current system with the unknown a la carte," LCCR stated.
Not all participants of the panel were against the a la carte system however. Gene Kimmelman, director of the Washington, D.C. office for Consumers Union, argued that the current cable model has failed diversity.
"This is the business model we shouldn't meddle with?" Kimmelman asked, noting that only a handful of companies control all cable programming. A la carte, according to Kimmelman, would give viewers more choice in the programs they want to see.
Nancy Zirkin, director of public policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, concluded that media plays an important role in civil rights issues and that the option of a la carte programming should be further discussed in that capacity.
"LCCR believes that the troubling impact on diversity must move to the center of [the FCC's] analysis of cable a la carte and that it must therefore caution Congress regarding its impact on diversity as it considers its adoption," she said.
