Word: fcc
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Some day, predicted Andy Warhol a few years ago, "everybody will be famous for at least 15 minutes." Thanks to the Federal Communications Commission, such universal celebrity may soon be possible. In 1972 the FCC ruled that all cable-television stations entering the top 100 market areas in the U.S. and having more than 3,500 subscribers must provide at least one channel for the exclusive use of the public on a first-come, first-served basis...
...strictly do-it-yourself. Cable operators are required to provide the hardware-studio facilities for live programming or video-camera and editing equipment for taped shows-and the cable time. Some cable companies also provide technical assistance, but few can afford to hire full-time public-access aides. The FCC lets the cable company charge a small equipment fee for programs that run more than the minimum five minutes allowed all applicants, but most stations schedule longer shows at no charge. If openings allow, in fact, even regular weekly shows may be arranged for. Usually the user's only...
...FCC forbids cable companies to interfere with public-access programming, except in a few cases, including obscenity. But even here it has left unresolved the question of who is responsible for deciding what is obscene-the company, the individual user, or some third party like a committee. In New York, where a state law prohibiting any censorship of public access further muddies the obscenity issue, a program called The Underground Tonight Show recently showed a startlingly explicit tape of a "female-masturbation therapy class." One of New York City's cable companies carried it, preceding it with a disclaimer...
Cable companies unanimously do not want to assume censorship responsibility. Says a spokeswoman for New York's Manhattan Cable TV: "It is not our channel; it is the public's channel." But many operators would like some sort of community-review system to try to implement the FCC'S obscenity clause...
...Minneapolis and Topeka, and it plans to challenge renewals in other markets as well. Joint owners are digging in on the argument that the Justice proposal would, as Broadcast magazine put it, "add few new public voices at the exorbitant price of wholesale dislocation in media operations." How the FCC will respond, after having dodged the issue for six years, remains to be seen...