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The TL;DR is: The court says it's ok to say "no" to accepting a channel. BUT not if it was because of racism. The trial will focus on whether they can prove it
by ggggtez 8y ago
The TL;DR is:
The court says it's ok to say "no" to accepting a channel. BUT not if it was because of racism.
The trial will focus on whether they can prove it was racism, or some other reason.
- gmfawcett 8y agoI think the lede for the article is a better summary: "A US appeals court ruling today said that cable companies do not have a First Amendment right to discriminate against minority-run TV channels." I first read your tl;dr as, "The companies can refuse channels, but not if those channels are racist."
- rconti 8y agoAgreed. If Charter said "too few of our customers will pay for this channel, it's not worth it to us", then they're within their rights. They shot themselves in the foot by having a VP of programming make racist comments to protestors. If those racist comments are found to be evidence that they also refused to carry the channel for race-related reasons, then they've got a problem. If the two facts are unrelated, then they don't. I wonder what happens if some emails are found during discovery that say "only X% of our customers are African-American, and X is less than our threshold for whether a channel will be profitable for us"? I suspect that would be an illegal reason, as, of course, customers of any race might be interested in this channel.
- mikeryan 8y agoIt doesn't seem like the channels in question target an African American audience. http://entertainmentstudios.com/network/ http://entertainmentstudios.com/network/ Frankly they look like cheap knockoffs of existing channels.
- howard941 8y agoWould you make an exception for The Weather Channel?