{"id":173,"date":"2004-11-12T13:06:58","date_gmt":"2004-11-12T18:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=173"},"modified":"2004-12-21T16:12:08","modified_gmt":"2004-12-21T21:12:08","slug":"and-now-they-want-to-ruin-pay-radio-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"And now they want to ruin pay radio, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:<\/strong> The petition was overturned<\/a>!<\/p>\n

The last bastion of free speech in radio, satellite broadcasting, is now under the censorship gun by conservatives.<\/p>\n

Mt. Wilson Broadcasters<\/a> has decided that if free, traditional radio is subject to heavy-handed censorship by the FCC<\/a> because it is publicly available to everyone, then so should pay, satellite radio. So far satellite has escaped censorship because it is a premium service that people must subscribe to (and thus voluntarily agree to receive the content). However, Mt. Wilson has decided to piss on the parade<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Their defense is that they’re 100% subscription, and therefore only people who want to hear obscene language will hear it. But they’re not 100% subscription. They make it available to car rentals without any charge and there are no controls on it – families rent cars and they can pick it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No<\/em> controls? So if someone walks up to a rental counter and needs c ar, they’re forced at gunpoint<\/em> to take the stallite radio option? No, I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

The truth is, while XM radio is “free” in some Avis rental cars, you must upgrade to “Premium” or “luxury”<\/a> class for it. And you can always turn it off<\/em>. <\/p>\n

I simply don’t understand why people feel that absolutely everything must be regulated for content. I can reluctantly understand that some heavy censoring of content is required for regular broadcast radio. I can entertain the notion the someone, somewhere might accidentally listen to a traditional radio broadcast that offends them, and we just can’t allow that. Perish the thought. However a great deal of conscious consent is necessary to tune into a satellite broadcast, including an investment in new equipment, and a subscription by credit card (which basically guarantees that you’re an adult, or at least that an adult is monitoring your purchases). If you rent a vehicle, you DO have to request<\/em> that the vehicle comes with a satellite radio, and even then you are not forced<\/em> to listen to it… you can still listen to good, safe, censored (and in my opinon, terrible<\/em>) terrestrial radio, right from the same console.<\/p>\n

Mt. Wilson appears to be afraid that not only will children hear adult content before they’re ready to make adult decisions of their own (which I thought was the real reason behind obscenity and profanity restrictions), but that even people who knowingly ask for this content<\/em> will actually be able to get it too. ::GASP!::<\/strong> Lord, we can’t have that!<\/p>\n

Lastly, as a subscriber, I can say that it’s not as if satellite radio is just bursting at the seams with 130 channels of pornography, either. Both providers clearly map out which channels<\/a> “may contain frequent explicit language” and if that tantalizing possibility is just too much for your virgin ears to take, a simple phone call to customer service will enable a channel blocking feature that blocks those channels from your radio, leaving you with nice, wholesome clean channels only. And the blatantly adult material<\/a>, which accounts for less than 1.5% of XM’s content and pretty much 0% of Sirius content, is further hidden in a “premium” category that subscribers must not only specifically request, but pay a few bucks a month extra for.<\/p>\n

This censorship business is getting to be insane. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Satellite radio under fire again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}