WASHINGTON -- A pair of powerful lawmakers want to put pay TV services under the same indecency regulations as over-the-air broadcasters, contending that viewers can't tell the difference between the services.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Commerce Committee, said Tuesday that it wasn't fair for broadcasters to come under different rules than cable and satellite TV services, especially because the raciest programs appear on cable and satellite television.

"The problem is most viewers don't differentiate between over-the-air and cable," Stevens said during the National Association of Broadcasters' annual state leadership conference. "Cable is a greater violator in the indecency arena."

Stevens brushed aside constitutional questions about whether the government has the right to regulate indecent speech on pay TV services.

"I think that's wrong," he said. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air because of the combination of the two."

As defined by the FCC and the courts, material is indecent if it "in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium."

Although obscene speech receives no First Amendment protection, indecent speech does. The government, however, has the ability to restrict it as a legitimate way to protect children. Indecent speech can be aired between 10 p.m.-6 a.m.

Because most people receive their TV via cable or satellite, the government has the power to regulate indecent content, he said.

Stevens doesn't want the regulations to stop with the most popular tiers, either, telling reporters that HBO and other premium channels should come under the same regulations.

His opinion was seconded by Barton.

"If we can work out the constitutional questions, I'd be supportive of that. I think they ought to ... to the extent it's possible, (play by) the same rules," Barton told reporters. "It's not fair to subject over-the-air broadcasters to one set of rules and not subject cable and satellite to no rules. So I'm supportive of what the senator says."

Both men chair the key congressional committees that oversee the broadcast and cable industries.

National Cable and Telecommunications Assn. spokesman Brian Deets said the lawmakers' remarks raise serious free-speech questions. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that the government can regulate the cable business but only in an economic context. Representatives for HBO and Showtime declined comment on the matter.

"We believe any regulation of cable content raises serious First Amendment objections and will oppose efforts to impose regulation on cable programming," Deets said. "As the U.S. Supreme Court has found, the subscription nature of cable service, and the ability of cable customers to block unwanted programming through the use of tools offered by local cable systems, strongly differentiate cable from broadcasting, which is distributed free and unfiltered over the air."

Stevens also said he strongly supports keeping language in indecency legislation that would increase the fines performers face for indecent broadcasts from $11,000 per incident to $500,000 and removes the FCC rule that gives performers a warning after the first incident. That language was included in legislation that won House approval last month that would raise the fines from $32,500 per incident to $500,000.

Last year, the performers clause was removed from the Senate legislation but was insisted on by the House. Although the bill failed to win approval in the last Congress, it is expected to win this year.

"They (performers) know they can get away with it, and the risk is on the networks," Stevens said.