Pols: Study Net Contracts

Nine members of the House committee that oversees the cable industry want the Federal Communications Commission to determine whether program-contract conditions contribute to rising retail cable rates and packaging of family-oriented programming with racy content.

The House members -- seven Republicans and two Democrats from the Energy and Commerce Committee -- asked FCC chairman Kevin Martin in a Dec. 12 letter to "investigate whether today's market structure provides consumers with the best mechanism possible to satisfy their ability to protect their families from objectionable content, as well as to help control the prices they pay."