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July 03, 2006
CBS Affiliates Fight FCC Idiocy
Posted by Alan Wexelblat
... well, SOMEONE ought to.
A couple weeks back, a coalition of CBS station affiliates filed a motion with the FCC arguing that they ought not to have to pay USD 3.3 million in fines for airing an episode of the show "Without a Trace" that included teenagers in various states of undress as part of a possible rape event. The meat of the motion is that there are no actual real people complaining here. Out of the over-4000 complaints received by the FCC, only two apparently came from people who saw the show. The rest were "astroturf" (that is, fake grass roots) pulled up by conservative Christian groups. Oh, and by the way? The show was a rerun of an episode that nobody complained about the first time it ran.
The affiliates note that this is tantamount to the FCC singling out programming it doesn't like for arbitrary censorship. Well, no duh. Nate Anderson has a nice review of the point-counterpoint on this over in ars technica.
Back when Howard Stern was the FCC's favorite whipping boy, it was abundantly clear that the agency was using hidden "standards" and arbitrary decision-making. If there's a more effective way to operate a censorship regime I hope never to see it.
Happy 4th of July, Americans. Try to remember why we have this holiday.
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1. Crosbie Fitch on July 3, 2006 12:56 PM writes...
Don't worry.
We'll soon have peer-to-peer TV (see http://www.videoegg.com ) and that's a tad more difficult to censor or fine.
Given it's also demand based - it isn't thrust in front of passive couch potatoes without their consent - the leg upon which the censorious would stand should be even more stunted, if not entirely vestigial.
No doubt there'll be pseudonymous production companies releasing 'hit & run' style works whenever there's a risk of pursuit by the fundamentalist authorities.
All the FCC is doing is hastening the demise of the centralised broadcasting model, and unwittingly encouraging precisely the kind of programming they cannot control.
Permalink to Comment2. Neo on July 5, 2006 02:24 AM writes...
Isn't there a minor issue of jurisdiction here, also? The FCC shouldn't have authority to fine Canadian broadcasters, even if they can be received over the air close to the border, or through cable redistribution of their programming. I'm pretty sure the CRTC (Canada's equivalent) can't fine the NBC for airing something that isn't bilingual, doesn't show enough snow, or depicted American-rules football, after all. :)
By the way, the "remember me" thing is still not working, and "blinks" with comments still show an incorrect comment count of zero.
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