Conservative columnist and activist L. Brent Bozell and the Parents Television Council (PTC), an organization he founded, are upset about two recent appeals court rulings. One was made in June by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, which threw out an FCC fine against Fox Broadcasting for allowing some "fleeting expletives" to get through uncensored during two of its live Fox Billboard Awards broadcasts. The other was last week by Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which struck down the FCC's $550,000 fine against 27 TV stations owned by CBS over Janet Jackson's now-infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004.
In one of his latest columns, Bozell says the earlier decision "opens the door for F-bombs galore, any time, anywhere." He also implies that the latter decision will likely do the same for nudity. He then sums up his disgust over these decisions by predicting that a flood of unrestrained indecency will soon begin on broadcast television. Oh really? I'll take the other side of that bet.
I agree with Bozell that much of what passes for entertainment nowadays on broadcast television contains far too much objectionable material. This comes in the form of profanity, violence, suggestive dialogue, and sexual situations. Is it absolutely immoral that broadcasters bring this kind of garbage into people's homes. However, I believe broadcasters would not cross certain lines, even without FCC regulation. Why do I say this? Because of the restraint that broadcasters practice during unregulated hours. From 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. every day, they are free to broadcast all the indecency they want. This includes the F-word, the S-word, explicit sexual suggestiveness, full frontal nudity, and even soft core porn. The only limit during those hours is that they can't broadcast obscenity, i.e., hardcore pornography and the like. Now, when is the last time you've seen or heard any of this stuff during those hours? Be honest. You don't hear or see it because they don't broadcast it, even though they would have every right to do so and they could do it with impunity.
What Bozell conveniently ignores is the fact that broadcasters, along with basic cable stations, have to answer to their advertisers. Just about all of their programs are advertiser-supported. Most of those advertisers, for fear of repercussions from individual citizens and organizations like Bozell's PTC, would pull their commercials from programs that go too far. Bozell knows this is the case because he's encouraged this kind activity by using "shaming" tactics against various companies whose ads have appeared on shows (both broadcast and cable) that he considered objectionable. However, his argument was made more effective by not acknowledging that part of broadcast paradigm.
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Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. His commentaries offer a unique point of view that is not often found in mainstream media. His articles here on SearchWarp represent only a small portion of his work. All of it can be found on his blog. If you like his articles, you'll love his blog.
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