It's astounding how most people don't get it - they decry some form of entertainment (too sexy usually) and then go right out and support the same industry they're complaining about (movie tickets, DVD rentals, music downloads).

You can hear Fox News watchers rant and rave about indecency in media, listen to Fox News on-air personnel agree loudly with them, and no one mentions just a couple of skips down the dial is a Fox-owned network where somebody is getting ass-raped in a junk yard.

Show me the money!

Object to Sahron Stone flashing her near-50 beaver on screen? Don't buy a ticket, don't rent the DVD - bye-bye Sharon Stone's beaver. Don't like Wal-Mart? Don't go in there. If enough people with the ability to choose (not the desperately working poor who can't afford to) do that, Wal-Mar profitability will plummet and the family will change. Don't like broadcast TV? Neilson works just like Arbitron.

It does, and always has, come down to one and only one thing (bless Cuba Gooding, Jr.)

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

• http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/clash/garageland.html

• http://www.lyricsbox.com/television-lyrics-venus-tcc643d.html

Access to the mass media gets you what? Crap suitable for mass consumption - the Beastie Boys and Carmen Electra.

It is only recently that markets existed on the scale that Stones concerts happen. Musicians, great musicians from Mahler to Gershwin played to a couple of hundered seats at a time. Now the expectation is that an act will play to 10,000 or 50,000 or 25 million over the television.

What can you put out that will appeal to 25 million people across the country? The lowest order of popular pap. Good stuff was, is and always be at the margins - don't look for it on ABC at 9 PM Wednesdays.

And as far as your cable example goes - think about it, there's over-air, 2 satellite networks, internet tv feeds and video rental thru the mail as well as whole seasons of tv series from Amazon, Circuit City and the like - you have plenty of choices if you want to exercise them.