Word: fcc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that possible? The reason the government can regulate broadcast TV and radio at all is that it owns the air. The FCC licenses frequencies on the airwaves, a public resource. In return, broadcasters must meet public-service requirements and obey decency rules, which ban "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities or organs." That's why the FCC can police four-letter words on NBC but not in a movie or this magazine. (Pornography is different, because the law distinguishes...
Cable TV doesn't use those airwaves. It transmits over cables laid and paid for by private industry. So it's questionable whether any extension of the FCC's powers to cable would be constitutional. Likewise, many legal experts think the fact that satellite radio requires a subscription fee would make it tough for regulations there to stand up in court. "I'd love to see cable and satellite covered," says conservative Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. "But I just think you have limitations...
...Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, calls this "regulation by raised eyebrow. If it goes too far, it gets out of hand. Then the government is at risk of acting beyond its constitutional powers." And that chill can have effects far beyond what the FCC is empowered to do directly. Says Shield creator Shawn Ryan: "There will be things that we will never see, that are victims of this mind-set. Nobody is really brave enough to take away the shows that people love. But it will have an effect on shows that the networks look...
Even more daunting to broadcasters is uncertainty. They say they have no idea what is acceptable now, and the FCC won't spell it out. Contrary to popular belief--and George Carlin's seven-words-you-can't-say-on-TV routine--there are no stone tablets to clarify that thou shalt never utter this word or show that body part. The FCC will rule on indecency after the fact--sometimes twice. At the 2003 Golden Globes, singer Bono of U2 called his band's winning Best Original Song from a Film "f___ing brilliant." In October 2003, the FCC...
...novelist and a TV and film writer who has written for cable and broadcast, "and that's what's scaring people." To better draw the line, industry sources tell TIME, broadcasters are considering a court test case--possibly even trying to overturn the 1978 ruling that defined the FCC's indecency standard, on the grounds of inconsistency. "There are two difficulties" that the FCC faces, says a broadcast executive. "One is that extreme [regulatory] positions are going to run into constitutional problems. The second is inconsistent and vague rulings are going to run into constitutional problems." Another strategy for networks...