More Cable Choice

If you go to the newsstand to buy a copy of Outdoor Life magazine, they don’t make you buy Vogue as well. But, under current Federal Communications Commission regulations, cable television customers are forced to buy lots of channels they don’t care for to get the few they want.

The new FCC chairman, former Charlottean Kevin J. Martin, wants to reverse the current policy and allow customers to order just the channels they prefer. He challenges the validity of an earlier FCC position that the “a la carte” option would save money only for customers who choose fewer than nine channels.

Martin is pushing the reversal for decency reasons, so that families with young children can order Disney without also allowing things like MTV into the house. But there are plenty of other reasons to favor offering consumers more freedom of choice.