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Time Warner Family-Friendly Channel Package Draws Opposition

Posted on: Saturday, 17 December 2005, 00:00 CST

By David Ranii, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Dec. 17--Time Warner Cable's new family-friendly package of channels -- designed to offer programming that no one would find objectionable -- is drawing opposition from critics who say the plan is too limited.

The president of the Parents Television Council, a national advocacy group for decency on the tube, accused the nation's No. 2 cable company of "deliberately offering a product designed to fail" by putting together a limited selection. The council wants Time Warner to let subscribers choose the channels they want.

Time Warner spokesman Tom Lawrence said of the new "Family Choice" tier, "I think it will probably satisfy some people and not others. There is no way you can satisfy everybody."

The tier, announced Thursday, offers 15 channels, including the Disney Channel and The Science Channel, and will cost between $32 and $36 for one TV, depending on where you live. That includes about $21 -- $12.99 a month for the channels, and a $7.61 monthly fee -- for a digital set-top box for each TV, plus a basic fee for local broadcast channels.

By contrast, Time Warner's standard service will cost $48.50 per month beginning in January.

The trade-off for the lower price of the family tier is fewer channels. Standard service includes about 50 channels, not including basic channels. Family Choice, in addition to the basic tier, features: Boomerang, C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN 3, CNN Headline News, The Science Channel, Discovery Kids, Disney Channel, DIY Network, FIT-TV, Food Network, HGTV, La Familia, Nick Games & Sports, The Weather Channel and Toon Disney.

The lineup of standard channels isn't affected by the family tier, which is expected to be available before the end of March.

Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group, a New Hampshire market research firm, doesn't expect the tier to be very popular with subscribers, because most want more viewing options. He said Time Warner's move was a response to political pressure, rather than customer demand.

Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, pushed the decency issue in recent Senate testimony, triggering plans to offer family-friendly packages by a half-dozen cable companies.

Lorraine Galkowski of Cary, who has two sons ages 11 and 9, said preteens also would want popular channels such as Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. "I'm guessing that it might not be a winner," she said.

Galkowski said omitting those channels appealed to her, because she doesn't like her sons being exposed to "cartoon violence." But she wishes the family tier had the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, which she views as educational.

Time Warner spokesman Mark Harrad said the company used a "very restrictive" definition of what would be appropriate for a family tier. The guiding principle: no viewer, no matter what their age, would view the channels' content as objectionable.

Harrad said there are channels Time Warner couldn't include in a family tier because of restrictions in the contracts that enables Time Warner to offer them. He declined to discuss why specific channels were left out of the mix.

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Source: The News & Observer

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