Join Our Fight For
Cable Choice!
 Dear %%nameemail%%,
I'm disgusted...and I'm angry.
And after you read this email message, you won't believe your eyes. I hope you will be moved to take action. I desperately, urgently, need your voice.
Cable television has grown by leaps and bounds since the mid-1990s. Today cable is found in most American homes and even in many schools. Cable is now a multi-billion-dollar a-year business. And the biggest players in the industry are using their astounding market power to become even bigger. If that happens, I fear that American children and families may never recover.
Cable television can, should, and not that long ago, did, provide informative, educational, and entertaining programming that delights viewers, and which they can share with their kids, while reserving programming for adults to premium channels like HBO. I proudly spent a portion of my career working in the cable industry, helping NBC to create, run and oversee their investment in some two dozen cable networks.
Unfortunately, some in the industry prefer to pander to the absolute lowest possible tastes on their basic cable networks...and today they are airing some of the most wretched, vile, and twisted TV content I've ever seen. What's worse, they force EVERY cable and satellite subscriber to pay for their full menu of filth, just to be able to receive news, sports and other family-quality programming.
One of the cable behemoths that forces bundles of cable networks onto consumers is Viacom. Viacom is the umbrella company that owns the cable networks Nickelodeon, Spike, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET, TV Land and CMT, among others.
Cable and satellite subscribers are charged a fee for each one of those networks, every month. It all comes out of your monthly cable bill. And just for Viacom's bundle of cable networks, you and every other cable subscriber pay about $70 per year. With almost 100 million cable and satellite subscribers in America today, that adds up to
Seven Billion Dollars per year, every year, for Viacom.
What do you get for that $70 you pay to Viacom every year? The content on these networks has become so foul, so extreme, and so disgusting that we cannot list it here, because most email spam filters would block it as obscene...but Viacom beams it directly into your living room, and they force you to pay for it.
Most responsible adults would never watch the type of material I'm talking about here. But I am asking you to take a moment and do so.
As parents and grandparents, you need to understand exactly what Viacom is providing to your children and grandchildren.
As consumers, you need to understand exactly what they are forcing you to pay for.
And as concerned and responsible citizens,
you need to understand exactly what we are fighting against.
Here is just a sample of the cable content
Viacom is forcing YOU to pay for. I must
warn you that this is
EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT!
-
A woman using a staple gun to staple a dollar bill to a man’s genitals; the man rubbing his naked rear on a stripper pole, after which another man licks the pole, then vomits (Half Pint Brawlers, Spike, 6/2/10)
-
A teenage boy explicitly masturbating and climaxing when his mother touches him; the same boy revealing his genitals to his entire school, then rubbing sweat from his genitals onto another boy’s face; and a schoolgirl who tells him, “Take my offer, RJ. Any time. Any place. Any orifice!” (The Hard Times of RJ Berger, MTV, 6/6/10)
-
Teens pounding nails through their own earlobes, being trampled by a bull, and being branded with a hot iron on their rears (The Dudesons in America, MTV, 5/6/10)
-
An entire football team contracting syphilis by sharing the same sex toy, and a man flinging a used condom in another man’s face (Blue Mountain State, Spike, 1/19/10 and 2/9/10)
-
Overwhelming profanity, including dozens of f-words in 112 minutes (MTV Movie Awards, MTV, 6/6/10)
-
Raunchy video games like “You da Sperm,” “Naughty Classroom,” and “Stick Dude Killing Arena,” all aimed at kids (AddictingGames.com, linked from Nickelodeon’s website)
-
A man being strangled, with his eyeballs popping out and dangling by their nerves; a baby being burned alive; and a decapitated corpse, the head resting in a pool of blood with the body impaled on a huge pitchfork, blood streaming everywhere, as a pantsless man urinates into the neck hole of the mutilated corpse (Ugly Americans, Comedy Central, 3/24/10)
-
Graphic references to intercourse and oral sex on a show aimed at children (Glenn Martin DDS, Nickelodeon, 9/28/09)
-
Incessant religious bigotry on Comedy Central’s
South Park, Drawn Together, and
the upcoming
JC.
|
This is what you are paying for. And while I've concentrated on Viacom, the content provided by other industry giants like NBC-Universal, News Corp. and Time Warner isn't much better.
I frequently hear from PTC opponents who say, "It is a parent's fault if kids watch material like this. Parents should do a better job." That is why Cable Choice is such an important solution.
Cable Choice is the very essence of parents taking responsibility, both morally and financially. Parents pay for cable subscriptions; children don't. And parents should not be forced to underwrite the type of programming that is harmful to their children.
With Cable Choice, subscribers would pay only for the cable networks they actually want, just like they do at the movie theater, the newsstand, the music store, and for every other form of media.
Cable Choice would allow parents to be far MORE effective in "doing their job" and protecting their kids, since the harmful content wouldn't even be coming into the home
-- and parents would not be forced to support it with their hard-earned dollars.
Yet every day, day in and day out, every cable and satellite subscriber in America is being forced to pay for programming like that described here. Whether you get your video service through a cable wire, a satellite service or from your phone company, you have no choice but to pay for the same bundle of cable networks.
It is outrageous that the industry so completely disregards the desires and interests of their customers. But it is
beyond outrageous that our government officials allow product bundling like this to happen.
Federal agencies are currently evaluating the proposed merger between NBC-Universal and Comcast. NBC-Universal is
one of the biggest owners, and Comcast is the largest cable operator in the United States. The PTC opposes this merger, or any merger that gives even more market power and control to an industry that delights
in an economic model that delivers content so offensive to most adults and so harmful to children.
If you are as tired of the extortionist practices of the cable industry as I am...if you are as tired of being forced to pay for filth such as that described on the web page linked above...then please take action!
Click here
to contact Congress and DEMAND Cable Choice.
I also ask: please forward this message to all your friends who share your values, and ask them to do likewise. The more voters that the Congress hears from, the more likely Congress will be to act.
And finally, please consider helping the PTC financially. We are fighting for your values and those of millions of American families, and we receive no government or corporate funding. We do this because someone has to stand up for your rights against the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry...and because our children are watching.
|
