John McCain is taking a break from advocating yet another war in the Middle East to make war against cable television companies.

The Hill (“McCain working on bill to allow for ‘a la carte’ cable TV packages“):
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is working on legislation that would pressure cable and satellite TV providers to allow their customers to pick and choose the channels they pay for, his office confirmed on Wednesday.

Consumers have long complained about the rising costs of cable TV packages and having to pay for dozens or even hundreds of channels just to gain access to the few that they watch.
[...]
In addition to pressuring cable providers to offer channels a la carte, McCain’s new bill would bar TV networks from bundling their broadcast stations with cable channels they own during negotiations with the cable companies, according to industry sources. So for example, the Disney Company, which owns both ABC and ESPN, could not force a cable provider to pay for ESPN in order to carry ABC.
The industry officials said the bill would also end the sports blackout rule, which prohibits cable companies from carrying a sports event if the game is blacked out on local broadcast television stations.
[...]
Color me skeptical. While I have no philosophical objection to Congress getting involved—the very limited number of service providers in most markets and a variety of anti-competitive practices on the part of the networks make this a legitimate governmental concern—it’s far from clear that they won’t muck it up.

On the surface, bundling seems like an outrageous practice—and it’s one that every cable and satellite service uses. DirecTV delivers hundreds of channels, of which I watch programming on less than a dozen. Because the sports channels in particular command high prices—both because there’s extraordinarily high consumer demand and because the networks have to pay enormous sums to the leagues for broadcast rights—they constitute a hefty portion of the cost of basic service. That’s patently unfair to those who don’t watch sports.
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