Tougher regulations on cable television's adult channels meet the Supreme Court Tuesday, as Playboy and California cable companies argue against Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Clinton Administration before the high court in a critical First Amendment case.
"We want to protect family viewing, but we just don't think the government should move down the road toward dictating…when certain programs should be aired," says California Cable Television Association public affairs director Paul Fadelli to Nando.net.
Feinstein, whose unanimously passed Senate amendment is at the crux of this case, says many parents in many cases have no idea their children can see and hear inadequately-scrambled adult material such as she wants to regulate, according to Nando.
The case hinges on which limits the government can impose on cable television broadcasts considered to be indecent which, unlike downright obscenity, enjoys some First Amendment protection. But invoking child protection grants the government some power to regulate such speech, Nando says.
Imperfect scrambling allows some sound and imagery to come through in a somewhat comprehensible form, despite the Playboy Channel, for example, scrambling its signal so only subscribers can see it. Feinstein tells Nando that local cable operators now can regulate themselves but that "is like the fox guarding the hen house."
Feinstein's legislation, an amendment to a telecommunications bill, passed unanimously in the Senate. It gave cable operators a choice between complete scrambling and moving all adult programming to the late night hours, the option most often chosen because it is less expensive to execute.
The measure was thrown out as unconstitutional by an appeals court which ruled the measure went too far when it restricted "a significant amount of protected speech" and covered even households with no children, Nando says.
