F%@#! C-SPAN

A few days ago, I read this article linked from Romenesko which said that C-SPAN was considering using a delay on its call-in shows. The author, Tim Cuspirin, made it sound as if there was a sudden upsurge in "obscene" callers, or at least that C-SPAN viewed things that way, and that C-SPAN was the originator of the idea:

For the first time in its nearly 25 years, C-SPAN is considering a delay on its phone lines to avoid an unacceptable comment slipping out during call-in shows.

"We're actually having some serious problems in the last month that worry us," says Brian Lamb, president and CEO of the network of three public affairs channels supported by the cable TV industry. "And if it doesn't stop, we're going to have to get a delay."

But this article from David Corn suggests that "serious problem" is not callers, but the Senate Commerce Committee's insane threat to impose decency standards on basic cable:

Another threat to C-SPAN materialized just days ago. On March 9, in a narrow vote--12 to 11--the Senate commerce committee barely beat back an effort to extend the decency standards that now apply to broadcasters to all cable programming (with the exception of premium and pay-for-view channels). How could this harm C-SPAN? After all, it's not as if it airs Howard Stern. But C-SPAN routinely shows events--campaign rallies, protests, and press conferences--where occasionally words deemed "indecent" by the FCC are uttered. That's what happens in real life. And there have been times when C-SPAN has covered a march or demonstration when a Janet Jackson-like moment has occurred. Lamb's guiding editorial philosophy has been that viewers in their living rooms should be able to see and hear exactly what they would see and hear if they were sitting in a hearing room or standing on the Washington Mall. But an indecency standard applied to C-SPAN could destroy its commitment to a showing events unedited in their entirety. "We don't want to edit and pixilate," Collins says.

If that's the "serious problem" Lamb was talking to Cuspirin about, Cuspirin needs to learn some basic journalism principles.

And where the hell does the Senate get the authority to regulate cable content? Fuck the Senate!