Word: ptc
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...though the PTC has a loud voice, just whom they speak for is debatable. Last year, in response to viewer complaints, the FCC levied its largest TV fine ever, $1.2 million, against Fox for an episode of the reality show Married by America, which featured strippers covered in whipped cream. The commission said the broadcast had generated 159 letters of complaint. Jeff Jarvis, a former TV critic who writes the blog BuzzMachine.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the letters. Because of multiple mailings, the letters actually came from just 23 people, 21 of whom used...
...other words, three people composing letters of complaint precipitated a seven-digit fine. "The problem," argues Jarvis, "is that the media swallows [the data] whole, and it takes on a life of its own. There was no flood of letters. It was a trickle." The PTC strongly denies trying to create an illusory mass of outraged citizens. Of the 1.1 million complaints filed with the FCC last year, Winter says, only about 230,000 came from the PTC...
...larger question is, Do the PTC and other decency campaigners simply want the freedom to find safe zones for their kids? Or do they want to bring you into the safe zone too--if necessary, by cleaning up shows that you have chosen to watch? The slogan that greets visitors to the PTC's website is "Because our children are watching." But for some decency advocates, the problem is also that someone else's children are watching--it's the problem, which both liberal and conservative parents experience, of being exposed to "secondhand smut." Jack Thompson is a Coral Gables...
...constitutional problems." Another strategy for networks is to argue that the existence of the V chip--a device, mandated on all television sets 13 in. or larger manufactured since 2000, that allows parents to block content considered suspect--demonstrates that there are less intrusive means of controlling content. The PTC counters that the V chip is not ubiquitous or widely used enough and that the voluntary ratings system it draws on is faulty...
...also has the power to makes regulatory decisions--from mergers to ownership rules--worth billions to media companies. That alone can be powerful incentive to self-censor. One proposal by Senator Stevens--and a longtime goal of the PTC's--is to make cable companies offer subscribers a bundle of channels rated according to their content. They could either buy channels separately or choose only a family-friendly "tier" of channels. That would be a boon for viewers who don't want to subsidize MTV's spring-break parties, but media companies claim it would raise prices and drive smaller...