Rebates for Blocking Content?

A Senate amendment for which no lawmaker has claimed responsibility would give the Federal Communications Commission authority to impose a block-and-rebate system on cable and satellite TV providers.

Block-and-rebate is the hottest new concept in the debate over what to do about children seeing sex and violence on cable TV. Until recently, cable critics wanted subscribers to pick channels on an a la carte basis, an opt-in model. Under block-and-rebate, consumers would presumably need to buy a tier and then opt-out of disfavored channels. A distinction without a difference? Who knows.

Lobbyists who obtained a copy of the amendment said FCC chairman Kevin Martin’s staff drafted it and began shopping it in the Senate in an effort to attach it to the agency’s annual budget, which comes before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. An FCC official couldn’t comment.

According to the amendment’s language, the FCC would have 270 days to adopt rules that would require pay-TV companies to give consumers credits on their monthly bills equal to the wholesale price of each channel the consumer had blocked for any reason. Just a thought: If the customer blocked every channel except the ones without a license fee, could the consumer expect free cable?

The amendment makes no reference to indecent or violent programming as the justification for a new consumer rebate right. Nevertheless, Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe told the Senate Commerce Committee in June that block-and-rebate mandates with a content-neutral design would still violate the First Amendment

“The freedom to speak is inseparable from the freedom to decide whether to charge for that speech or, instead, to distribute it without financial remuneration,” Tribe said in written testimony.

A spokeswoman for TV indecency foe Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) couldn’t say whether he would offer the block-and-rebate amendment. A spokesman for Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Il.), chairman of the subcommittee that approved the FCC’s new $313 million budget on Tuesday, couldn’t confirm rumors that Durbin supported block-and-rebate.