But the thing is, I am paying extra for the subscription to get content I don’t get over-the-air. Otherwise why pay for it. So yeah, it does sound suspiciously like an attempt to hobble the competition of the mainstream conglomerates. Already they force the CATV providers to carry every penny-ante local TV station in howevermany miles around.
Of course, the simplest answer for parents is, don’t get XM/Sirius on your built-in car radio. Get it for a detachable plug-in unit that you keep wityh yourself or better yet, don’t get it, period, you can live without it.
Or lock the offending stations out. XM can and will lock out any station you want for any receiver. For example, if you want your radio to have full access, but you only want the kids to have access to a set list of stations you could, in theory, get XM to lock out all the other stations on that receiver. Then all you have to do is keep the receivers straight. If the kid is young, you can at least (on the Delphi SkiFi at least) remove the stations you don’t want from the main scroll. I did it with a whole bunch of stations I never listen to, though if for some reason I want to listen to one, I can either punch in the station number or go through the submenus to get it.
I’ve never understood most of the problems some people seem to have. For those who want to use TV as a babysitter and never pay attention to what the kids watch, Congress forced through the ratings system on TV and any new TV will have a V-chip to block any programming coming through higher than a level set. Most DVD players can do the same thing with movie ratings encoded into the DVD. Of course, eventually a smart kid will find a way around it, but it’d take time to break even the simple 4-digit numeric password protecting V-chip and DVD-player settings, especially if you had to brute-force it and the parent didn’t use something really obvious.
So Sleepygirl, is what the President said what you think you heard – that he beleives that there ought to be standards so people can judge content but that ultimately the decision ought to be made by the marketplace?
I think the idea is to charitably assume that “standards” means non-obligation-bearing ratings, like film certificates but without any legal standing. Why we might need the government to tell us the content of a particular program is beyond me, however, since IME broadcasters go out of their way to let you know exactly what’s coming (I say this having just been lightly traumatised by a trailer for PLASTIC SURGERY LIVE!!!). All a non-binding classification system would prove is that the classifiers make bizarre and prudish classifications of no real informational value to anyone. On the other hand, it might lead to some more of those entertaining warnings (“and now the News, which is rated DUH for severe intellectual stunting, and contains language, moderate peril and slime.”).
Personally, I think you got it in one. I think it has everything to do with satellite radio/Internet, and cable/sat TV is just getting caught up in the backlash/extension of the issue.
The 5 media corporations that control the majority of broadcast media aren’t worried about Cable/Satellite TV, because they’ve already got their hand in deep there. Satellite radio and Internet, not so much. And performers and consumers are starting to take both their talent and consumer dollars to places the media corporations don’t yet hold sway. Can’t be having that, no sir.