Word: fcc
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...from $32,500 for stations and $11,000 for individual performers). A Senate bill introduced last week by John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, also ups the ante to $500,000, plus would bring cable and satellite under FCC purview, though vaguely. Yet most frightening to media executives are the warnings of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska and the powerful chairman of the Commerce Committee, that he may push his own legislation to curb cable. "Eighty-five percent of the people watching televisions today are watching through cable, but they think...
...laws pass, the FCC's Martin is likely to be aggressive with them. In the past, he criticized some decisions during Powell's tenure as too lenient--such as not fining Fox for the horse-prostitute liaison on Keen Eddie--and called for fines not only to be stiffer but also to be assessed "per utterance," not per incident (one unbleeped Dave Chappelle routine, and you're in the poorhouse). He also wants to restore the "family hour" to prime time. Decency advocates are big fans. "He can send the signal that the agency has to get serious," says Bozell...
...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...