The FCC decided yesterday to postpone a vote on whether or not cable penetration has reached 70% of US households, meaning that the agency can impose regulations on the cable industry. However, the FCC did decide to slash rates on leased cable access TV, down to 10 cents per month per subscriber for 24 hours of access. This new decision opens a huge opportunity for liberal entrepreneurs to begin developing a framework for a national progressive cable TV channel.

I don't have time to write up all of my thoughts just now; more will come on the weekend. However, I have three quick hits:

• A liberal entrepreneur could begin taking bids on potential advertising space on progressive prime-time cable TV in major metropolitan areas, in order to demonstrate feasibility of such a venture. The FCC's decision means that the amount of advertising needed to sustain this kind of venture is now much lower (perhaps 3 times lower) than it was recently.
• A liberal entrepreneur could undertake a data mining experiment to identify stations which might be most likely to grant leased access, and which have coverage of major metropolitan areas. For example, data mining could help uncover stations which are financially weak and struggling to find advertisers.
• Finally, an entrepreneur could try and solve one of the biggest problems in gaining leased access: finding connections with TV operators. This is a very tricky problem, an I'm not really sure how to solve it. But it occurs to me that some form of social networking activism would be helpful along these lines.

That's all I've got for now. More coming this weekend, here and at MyDD!

http://www.plantingliberally.org/content/entrepreneurial_approaches_creating_progressive_cable_tv