Shot Down

The FCC ruled in favor of local cable providers yesterday, saying that the local broadcaster's demands that the providers carry more than one digital channel per station was unreasonable. Basically, the local broadcasters wanted the cable companies to split the bandwidth that one hi-def channel would occupy, and provide four or five low-bandwidth channels of alternate programming from the same station or network. Now, I wonder why they'd want that...

They also fear that broadcasters might use the extra capacity to carry nothing but shopping shows or infomercials.

Ya think? Say, for example, like they did in the late 1990's, after Congress and the FCC agreed to grant extra bandwidth to broadcasters and networks so they could implement HDTV sooner, and then they used it to create eight bajillion shopping channels? Meanwhile HDTV is still in the infancy stage to this day. Sorta like that, maybe?

Sometimes I really, really hate capitalism. Greedy bastards.