New chief at FCC cool to a la carte cable

NEW YORK — Robert McDowell, the newest member of the Federal Communications Commission, on Tuesday said he didn’t see a compelling need for cable TV operators to sell channels individually.

McDowell was touching on a long-simmering issue in the cable industry, which has resisted calls from consumer groups and others to break up the bundles of cable channels and sell them on an individual, or “a la carte,” basis.

McDowell’s views on the issue diverged from those of the FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who has embraced the idea of cable companies offering channels individually, partly as a way to offer parents greater choice in screening out programming they don’t want kids to see.

“We’re in an a la carte world already,” McDowell said in remarks to a group of investors and analysts at a conference in New York sponsored by Credit Suisse.

Noting that his children were shocked at the idea of having to wait until 8 p.m. to watch a certain show, McDowell said that viewers are becoming increasingly accustomed to exercising greater choice over viewing shows.

“There’s a lot of pasta being thrown against the wall” by media companies as they experiment with offerings of video-on-demand, or VOD, services and other novel ways of distributing programming, he said.

Broadcast networks now make shows available streaming over the Internet or through downloads on Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes service, and CBS Corp. is also releasing TV clips through the YouTube video-sharing service, which was recently acquired by Internet search leader Google Inc.

“For now, we can just watch,” McDowell said of the issue of cable operators offering channels individually.

Some consumer groups want cable operators to give people more choice over which channels they receive and pay for, but cable companies say that would raise prices for all by raising their costs for billing and customizing all the different cable packages for individuals.

Cable companies also say the bundling system allows the costs of cable channels to be spread over a wider base, allowing for a greater diversity of programming.

Advocates of family-friendly programming say that cable customers shouldn’t have to pay for channels which carry sexual or violent programming that they object to.

As for the decency issue, McDowell said parents will have an ever greater ability to screen programming they may find objectionable. “They’ll be able to select what they want to see,” he said.