The Senate Commerce Committee this week held a hearing “Rethinking the Children’s Television Act for a Digital Media Age” to explore if rules governing television programming for children should be updated to reflect the new media world that we now live in.

Among those testifying before the committee was new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who mentioned that the FCC will be launching a Notice of Inquiry that will address these issues including how “the FCC can best protect children in a digital age,” and he said that the agency will look at “new concerns and new opportunities in the new media world.”

During the hearing, some members of the committee mentioned how they would like a tool on a TV or remote control (specifically, the idea of a “little red button” ) to provide information about the show and the show’s rating.

From cable’s perspective, the good news is that this button (which sometimes even comes in red) already exists.  About 65% of cable customers subscribe to digital cable service and their set-top box remote controls include an “Info” (or other similarly worded) button that, when pressed, pulls up program content descriptions and ratings.

But perhaps even more important than this one button, cable operators have for many years empowered their customers with parental control options built right into cable’s set-top boxes that enable families to monitor and control TV viewing in their household.

Cable’s parental controls take just a few simple steps to set up via the easy-to-use on-screen menus which are guided by the remote control.  The industry has also created and participated in programs to educate parents about these tools, like the Control Your TV and The TV Boss campaigns of recent years.

Parental control tools help parents both identify programming that is appropriate (or inappropriate) for their children, and then provide a way for parents to block access to programming that they do not want their children to watch.  The parental controls work well because both programmers (those who produce the content) and operators (those who deliver the content) are working together.

For their part, cable programmers utilize a common rating system to provide parents with information about a show’s age appropriateness and its content.  The so-called “content descriptors” for the program tell parents why a particular show was given a specific rating, making is much easier to decide if the program is something they want their kids to watch.  Using the ratings information provided by the programmers, cable operators then provide customers with the technology to identify and block programming based on these ratings, as well as a variety of other options.

There are many ways parents can use these tools.  Entire channels, or entire features like video-on-demand, on a cable line-up can be blocked.  Programming can be blocked based on age-appropriateness via the age-based ratings, or by content descriptions, or both.  Once an age-appropriate viewing level has been set, the parental control tools can automatically lock higher ratings or levels of content.

For example, if a customer chooses to lock based on the TV-PG rating, all higher-rated content – such as TV-14 and TV-MA – is automatically blocked.  If a customer chooses to block based on a content descriptor – such as “moderate violence” – higher levels of violent content will also be automatically blocked.  And some digital boxes also enable customers to block content based on time and day.

These tools are really at the fingertips of parents, and it is as easy to turn on these settings for the kids, as it is easy to temporarily turn off all locks (for adults to view what they like) and have those locks automatically restored once the set-top box is turned off.

Besides the easy-to-use parental control technology, cable offers hours and hours – and channels and channels – of kid-friendly, family, and educational programming.  Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation did a great job highlighting the many available options in his post: We Are Living in the Golden Age of Children’s Programming.

Cable TV allows kids to explore animals from Discovery Kids show Bindi the Jungle Girl, travel to faraway places with Nick’s Dora the Explorer and dance alongside Mickey Mouse on Disney.  However, in order for cable to entertain everyone, there are some shows that don’t cater to children.  Parents are best suited to decide what channels and shows their children should watch, and then utilize the parental control tools to help carry through on these decisions.

We’re still about a week away from the summer solstice, but it sure feels like summer already. The massive heatwave in Washington, D.C. this week helped set the tone, but the available programming on broadcast television also contributes.

It’s no secret that cable programming has been doing very well in recent years, especially as compared to broadcast television. Just one example is the growing number of honors that cable has won over the years.

Lost, The Big Bang Theory and The Office have gone bye-bye for a while and instead we can look forward to I Survived A Japanese Game Show and Dance Machine. But one way to make it through the summer TV doldrums is to turn to cable television. I am reminded of this by two items from this week. On Monday, the NY Times‘ David Carr pointed out it’s a Golden Age for TV? Yes, on Cable. Yesterday, Hamilton Nolan noted on Gawker: Cable: The Old New Big Thing.

Carr said this:

However, for anybody with cable — and that includes most of us — television is in something of a golden age. Cable networks other than the fancy subscription services like HBO and Showtime used to be the realm of stupid human tricks and commercials for six-minute abs, but networks have shot by them in the race to the bottom.

Channels like TNT, AMC, FX and others came up with their own versions of “Trading Places” and carved out niches, sometimes huge ones, by letting viewers know that narrative, quality and drama have not gone off the grid.

And Hamilton said this:

Networks must, by design, try for mass appeal. Cable channels can target their audiences much more effectively. The scary thing for networks is that even specialized cable channels no longer represent just a niche audience any more; they are almost as plugged into the mainstream as the networks themselves.

The success of cable is built on serving niches. As Carr said, those niches can get collectively pretty big.

The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau has a handy chart on its website showing the effect of summer: Ad-Supported Cable Viewing Shares Heat Up In The Summertime. It looks at all dayparts, but if we examine just one metric, we see that primetime ratings for ad-supported cable networks increased 17% from November ’06 to July ’07, while broadcast ratings went down 33% for that same time period.

It’s worth revisiting a topic that never goes off the radar: Concern about content. Everybody can agree that cable transformed the television landscape by vastly expanding viewing choices, but not every viewing option is to everybody’s taste.

But the important point to remember that what cable delivers is choice. You get a ton of options and then you pick out the ones that appeal to you. Spouses, partners, kids, friends and neighbors all are likely to make different choices. But by starting with a wide initial set of options, everybody can have a better chance of being satisfied.

Some people are very concerned about certain programs. This is very understandable, because not all programming is appropriate for all ages. Some content may not be to your taste or may even offend you. Fortunately, there is a solution: parental control features.

You can find out more at our website Control Your TV or from a report prepared by the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Adam Thierer. Suffice it to say that between your television’s V-chip controls and those of cable’s digital set-top boxes, you have the ability to block by channel, rating or show. (Also, read this chronology to see how long the cable industry has been addressing this issue.)

Philosophical argument #1: I don’t like a piece of content, so it ought to be stopped. The problem with this approach is that what’s a problem for you may not be a problem for me and vice versa. The best solution is not to ban, but to allow me to choose that content and allow you to block it out.

Philosophical argument #2: That piece of content is so offensive that it’s wrong that I’m “forced to subsidize it” with my cable subscription. Currently, the best and most economically efficient way to deliver a broad array of viewing options is through bundles of channels. You may feel like you’re “subsidizing” the channels you don’t watch, but your fellow subscribers who don’t watch your favorites may be “subsidizing” yours. There is plenty of evidence to show that a mandatory a la carte system would lead to fewer viewing options, less diversity of content, and higher prices overall.