'family' Tiers On Sat, Cable Stall Pols' A La Carte Push

The cable and satellite TV industries' willingness to provide a "family-friendly" programming tier may have blunted a legislative drive requiring the delivery services to provide a la carte channel offerings, at least for now.

On Thursday, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told industry executives and family advocates that he wanted to give the new industry proposals time to work before he pushed for legislation requiring the entertainment industry to do more.

"It's my opinion that we could go for a hard mandate, but then that would be tied up in court for years, and it wouldn't do any good for the American people," Stevens said during a hearing on indecent TV programming. "With 85% of the American people subscribing to cable, I think we should explore this voluntary option first."

Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been pushing the industry to take more aggressive steps to allow parents to block racy programming. The satellite TV industry and a slew of major cable companies have made announcements over the past few weeks that they plan to set up programming tiers excluding programming designed for adults. According to such companies as DirecTV, EchoStar, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the new programming tiers will allow parents to keep sometimes objectionable programming out of their homes.

While Stevens told the executives that he was impressed by their actions and wanted to see if the new systems will work, he told reporters that he still expects to move some kind of indecency legislation this year.

"We have to get around to doing it," he said. "We've been criticized for the delay, but what we've done so far has brought great change immediately in the cable and satellite industry."

It was unclear exactly what the legislation would entail. The House has twice approved legislation that would increase fines for broadcasts of indecent programming from $32,500 to $500,000 per incident. The House-passed legislation also would allow the FCC to treat individuals who uttered obscenities or engaged in lewd behavior on the air the same as broadcast companies. Currently, individuals can be fined $11,000 for violating indecency standards, but the FCC has to give them a warning first.

Stevens might decide to push that bill or write a new one. He said he did not want to act on indecency legislation until the committee studied the impact of the Internet.

"We're talking about broadcasting and cable here, but it's taking place on the Internet to a greater extent," he told reporters after the hearing. "I don't think we'll be able to solve anything until we look at the problem on the Internet, which, in my opinion, is much worse."

Stevens,