Cable Customers Have Control Back Off Simple Remedies Already Are In Place To Correct The Problem.

The Spokane City Council is under heavy pressure to defend TV-watching households from an infiltration by unwanted smut.

Specifically, a group of petitioners wants the city to require the community’s cable television provider - which is about to change from Cox Cable to Tele-Communications Inc. - to black out the unwanted signals for so-called adult channels such as Spice and Playboy.

Not scramble, which happens now, but black out.

At first blush, so to speak, the request sounds reasonable.

For viewers who do have cable-ready television sets but don’t have set-top converter boxes, the scrambled signal is an imperfect answer. It scrambles the video but not the sometimes shocking audio. And even the picture unscrambles itself enough to let occasionally viewable images through.

But simple remedies already are in place to correct that problem, which affects a little more than a third of the area’s cable customers.

No, subscribers don’t have to disconnect cable or heave the TV set out the window. No, they don’t have to tie up the kids or monitor their viewing 24 hours a day. And, no, they surely don’t have to turn the responsibility over to city government.

For one thing, owners of cable-ready sets can merely program them to skip past the objectionable signals. Or, if they’re worried that techno-savvy youngsters will subvert the programming option, they can have the cable provider block the signal from their homes altogether at no cost.

What the petitioners want, however, is for the City Council to require Tele-Communications Inc. to completely block those channels to all customers except the ones who pay to receive them.

To do that, assuming the city has the authority, would mean reopening the Cox contract, which has nearly a decade yet to run, and negotiating a new agreement with TCI. The existing contract is a pretty good one for both the city and consumers, and reopening it to force the blackout issue could result in losing some current benefits.

That risk isn’t worth taking, not when those individuals who don’t want the objectionable signals, scrambled or otherwise, already have ready access to other convenient ways of keeping them out.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: Blackout tells cable to stop the tease

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