The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Winning one
: Even the FCC sees that it can’t regulate speech on satellite. A dork broadcaster filed a letter with the FCC asking to extend its censorship to satellite, just to be fair to broadcast (rather than the proper request, which is to end censorship). W. Kenneth Ferree, chief of the Media Bureau, just replied.
The Commission has previously ruled that
I find it reassuring that the FCC recognizes the difference between subscription and broadcast.
Isn’t broadcasting essentially like putting a billboard up next to a freeway, and therefore, fair to regulate since the people on the freeway can’t control what they are exposed to (short of choosing not to use the freeway)?
This is why broadcasting is just plain flawed as a medium. I’m resigned to let the dunderheads have broadcasting, as long as I can get Howard Stern elsewhere.
I wish you wouldn’t assume that people who are upset about crude programming on broadcast are acting out of a “religious agenda.” There are a lot of parents out there who agree with the FCC’s long-held standard of protecting children from indecency on over-the-air programming, simply because they don’t want their children to take in something they’re not mature enough to handle. The TV ratings system helps a little, but live broadcasts have proven to be more unpredictable. Broadcast is uniquely pervasive, but I’m happy along with you that it’s also increasingly irrelevant. I don’t like the PTC either, but there’s certainly a middle ground between their censorious agenda and your Hugo Black absolutist agenda: regular parents who simply want the networks to take their concerns to heart, and for their representatives to speak on their behalf against a powerful special interest.
I hope we can stem the post-titgate tide of censorship and once again stand behind our First Amendment. I emphasize “hope.”
Yeah, I can’t wait until we can see tits all over the television once again. The good ole days. Remember when it wasn’t a big deal when someone flashed their boobs during prime time TV?
Wait, you mean that never happened, you mean Ginger never got naked on Gilligan’s Island?? Marcia never made out with Jan?
The FCC is obviously way out of control, the shows nowadays can’t get away with anything, TV and radio was so much raunchier and better back in the day when our free speech was being violated.
No, in the good old days there weren’t many with a national platform who had any reason to complain about it. Saul Levine’s no dork. He owns some expensive broadcast licenses that had value through scarcity that are slowly losing their luster thanks to all the new immediate pathways electronic media now has thanks to the internet.
Sure, Levine made the wrong argument, but don’t people in his position always do so, whether its NBC supressing FM because they owned I-A Clear AMs, or Black Hills television station owners who couldn’t compete with the big boys in Denver, or Eddie Fritts who thinks that local traffic and weather from a satellite is blasphemy?
These guys are guarding the past, because they can’t compete any more. All they can do is try deus ex machina arguments to try and turn back the clock
I don’t know what people are so afraid of to let the market decide. That’s what happens on basic cable, and there’s nothing real bad on there. They have standards and practices, and they respond to the consumer, and boycotts, and advertisers. There are no boobs on basic cable, or use of the F-word that I’ve heard, or even much gratuitous violence. They even ‘edit for tv’ the Hollywood movies they show; I don’t even know why they do that, but they do. So if broadcast was de-regulated, it’d just be like basic cable – you know, essentially PG-13.
Basic cable is regulated.
No it isn’t Mike, it’s VOLUNTARILY regulated by the cable companies/stations, because they are still beholden to advertising dollars. But the FCC has no jurisdiction over cable. Although, the pricks at the PTC are trying to change that as well.
Jerry and Del are right that broadcasters see the issue as competition, not free speech–and so labeled “luddites” by the courts, Nat’l Ass’n of Broadcasters v. FCC, 740 F.2d 1190, 1197 (D.C. Cir 1984). They halted their efforts to block satellite radio traffic/weather only when it became clear they would lose at the FCC.
I think it’s worth noting something from after the Powell/Stern exchange. My recollection is that Powell stated that one (or more) other commissioners had expressed an interest in regulating satellite, but that Powell felt it was clearly unconstitutional.
Jeff…What about people like, say, Al-Manar TV (Hezbollah’s outlet)?
Certainly we shouldn’t give terrorists a platform?
By the way, Mr. Jarvis, you might find this recent interview with Michael Powell interesting.
In it, he argues that in his opinion, the First Amendment should cover broadcasting like it does cable, and that the FCC should not have the power over obscenity. However, he goes on to argue that the legislation exists, the history exists, and the doctrine has existed and been upheld since 1920, so, nowithstanding his objections he is bound to uphold it.
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