Sarah_Jayne

FCC combing air tapes for dirty words

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - In its continuing crackdown on on-air profanity, the FCC has requested numerous tapes from broadcasters that might include vulgar remarks from unruly spectators, coaches and athletes at live sporting events, industry sources said.


Tapes requested by the commission include live broadcasts of football games and NASCAR races where the participants or the crowds let loose with an expletive. While commission officials refused to talk about its requests, one broadcast company executive said the commission had asked for 30 tapes of live sports and news programs.

"It looks like they want to end live broadcast TV," said one executive, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. "We already know that they aren't afraid to go after news."

NO SLIPS ALLOWED

While live programming always has been problematic for broadcasters, it has become even more difficult under tougher commission rules approved in 2004. The new rules found that virtually any use of certain expletives will be considered profane and indecent, even if it is a slip of the tongue. In a March decision, the FCC found that the CBS news program "The Early Show" violated its indecency rules because of a profane slip-up but did not issue a fine because the incident occurred before the new rules were instituted.

Live sports -- amateur, college and professional -- have long been a broadcast programming staple. Broadcasters have spent enormous amounts of money and energy to come up with ways to give audiences a better feel for the action. As broadcasters vie for viewers, technical advances that include such things as on-field microphones and in-car cameras have become as important as the announcers.

"I don't know how they are going to rule, but they asked us for tapes with a specific emphasis on crowd noise," said another TV executive, who also requested anonymity. "If some bozo in the crowd calls the ref an asshole, the commission is asking for a copy of the tape."

A live, on-field event -- albeit when no athletes were on the field -- during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, when Janet Jackson's breast was accidentally bared, helped reignite Washington's interest in the indecency issue. Since then there has been a highly charged fight at the commission about just how far the commission can go in restricting broadcasts.

OPINION DIVIDED

Broadcasters last week split over whether the commission should be allowed to get one of the premier indecency cases back from the federal court in New York.

In a series of motions filed Friday in federal court in New York, Fox and its affiliate group, CBS and NBC opposed an attempt this week by the FCC to get a key indecency case back from the court.

The commission this month asked the same federal court for more time to consider affiliates' arguments that the agency erred in March when it decided variations of the words "fuck" and "shit" likely are to be indecent whenever broadcast, even if the words are uttered accidentally.

A delay would let affiliates contest the decisions before the commission. The FCC contends that this is a necessary step before arguing in court. The agency said ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates backed its request.

Under federal court rulings and commission rules, material is indecent if it "in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." Indecent speech can be aired safely between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Under a new law approved by Congress and signed by President Bush, broadcasters face fines of as much as $325,000 per violation, up from a previous maximum of $32,500.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060712/...a_indecency_dc

Kimo

fucking bullshit man, stupid fucks

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gooddomains

the are total idiots

Jakke PNG

Bahahahah that's hilarious.

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TheJimmy

And we thought the taliban were extremists.

<Of course they were, but you know what I'm getting at right?!?!?!?>

:0

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ALLY

the same for me...

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Sarah_Jayne

I know exactly what you are getting at.

Fizzgig

Down with freedom! Up with censorship! Heil Georgie!

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studiocritic

sarah, how do you find the climate in the UK, compared to the US?

From a freedom of speech standpoint (saying things in public, not on air), from a personal privacy standpoint, and from an "indecency on television" standpoint?

I know you've lived in both for a good amount of time, I'm curious to hear from someone in our industry the contrasts..

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Sarah_Jayne

I haven't lived in the USA for 10 years now, though I do visit so it is hard for me directly compare. I know the USA has moved on in some ways. I can remember as a kid when it was a huge deal that somebody showed their ass on NYPD Blues but now people say 'ass' on the tv shows I see from the States. That wouldn't have been the case when I was a kid.

The UK used to have a lot more issues about decency standards on tv but in modern days there are very few cases where it becomes a big issue. Largely because of something called the 'watershed' which limits 'adult' material to after a certain time at night. Shows before then need to be cleaner but after that time you can pretty much use any word. You are more likely to hear complaints about violence than language or nudity.

That said, compared to mainland Europe the UK is really restrictive.

As far as personal privacy goes, I again haven't lived in the States for a while so I can't really talk about what it is like there at the moment. Here it is a big issue. You can't go anywhere in London without being on a camera. There are a lot of good things about that - stopping crimes as they are happening and capturing the people that did the ones you couldn't stop - but it is really starting to become an issue here. On one hand there are a lot of rules in place here of who can see your personal information because of privacy rules but on the other hand you can't go a moment on a public street without being on a camera.

studiocritic

Do the cameras and the whole big brother effect bother you?

I always thought I'd love to live in London, but their government has become so Draconian (not that ours isn't headed that way, now) in the last decade.. I'd sooner move to Mexico.

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Sarah_Jayne

To be honest it doesn't bother me much because I am not doing anything on the streets that I shouldn't be doing - ie mugging somebody. That said, I understand why it would bother some people. Also, I think the gov't in the last ten years has done a lot less than it would have if it was still a Conservative government. I worry about what a Torry gov't would do with a fully mature internet - something they have never had to deal with.

studiocritic

God help you if Labour loses their foothold.

God help all of us if there are neocons in the US, AND Tories in the UK.

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Sarah_Jayne

I have said that to people here. If they think things have been bad with Tony Blair being Bush's 'poodle' I can only imagine what it would be like if we had a leader that actually shared the same political views as him.

studiocritic

shudder.

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Pandemos

There seems to be something of a misunderstanding about the nature of the Conservative party. People seem to want to draw parallels with the Republicans and while there was a legitimate comparison to be drawn between Thatcher's Tories and Reagan's Republicans, that no longer holds.

Where the Republicans are being driven further to the right and dragging the Democrats that way as a result, the Conservatives are shaping up as a broadly centre-right *liberal* political party. Sure there are some harder right-wingers in there, but their influence is diminishing as all the main parties head towards the centre ground, which is where the vast majority of British voters are to be found.

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Sarah_Jayne

Yeah that is true to an extent but if you had to draw comparrisons the Conservatives are more like republicans than democrats and Labour is more like democrats than republicans. Nobody is like the Lib Dems..lol

I think the UK does benefit a bit of being more than a two party system in that a lot of the really extreme Torries of the past are moving to independence parties or their own fringe parties. I still could never vote Torry though.

notabook

Yikes, freedom of speech really is no more. Oh well, glad we had a good run while it lasted. Back to my job as a republican editor for a white Christian conservative paper.

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SirMoby

But of course the depiction of rape, murder and kidnapping that occurs on many prime time shows is perfectly acceptable.

Tdog

Americans give way too much money to the governments. When they have alot of money and alot of time, this is what happens.

Snake Doctor

On the live sporting events thing they're being stupid.

I do have to say though that overall they're doing a piss poor job of properly rating and monitoring TV shows.

My 12 year old nephew was here last week and wanted to watch wrestling on TV. Since my 8 year old son would be watching with him I clicked the info button on the cable remote and the info said the program was rated PG.
So I figured it would be ok for them to watch.

During the program the people constantly used words like ass, bitch, slut, etc.
Forget about the staged violence, it was the overbearing sexual connotations and lewd depiction of women throughout the whole program that bothered me.
Not to mention they were showing girls gone wild commercials during the break!!!

Now obviously I'm not a prude and I have no problem with something like this being broadcast on cable. But for pete's sake don't rate it PG so that I let my 8 year old watch it. Bunch of sick fucks.

Doctor Dre

Bigger agenda behind this ?

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ADL Colin

They will push it too far and there will be a backlash.

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jayeff

Our positions are almost mirrors: I'm from the UK but I have lived in the US for almost 10 years. One thing I couldn't help noticing was the difference in our perspectives.

For example, the camera issue has never bothered me at all: walking down the street I'm just another anonymous face, while their effectiveness at reducing crime is significant. On the other hand, here in the US photo ID is required and it sometimes seems as if everyone and his brother asks for your social security number. In the UK I would have difficulty finding where I had kept a note of mine: I certainly wouldn't have memorized it. I'm also surprised at the way bureaucracy seems to have its finger in everything here: I was paying at an ordinary local restaurant a while ago and counted 7 different licenses on the wall behind the cash register.

When I was younger I ran a fund to pay the fines of people who were arrested at demonstrations and that gave me a good taste of how difficult the UK police can make your life if you p*ss them off. Yet they only bent the rules far enough to harass me a little and otherwise behaved correctly. I have only had to deal once with the law here, which was when I was stopped in my car for no other reason than a couple local policemen were either bored or curious. It turned out okay, but by the standards I'm used to, it was a very aggressive encounter.

ADL Colin

Nice post. Spot on. Despite the constant feeling that the FCC is limiting things there is a powerful OVERALL move toward greater freedom on TV. Elvis' gyrating hips caused an uproar in the 50s. Now it is Janet Jackson's tits.
Even a married couple couldn't appear on TV in bed together until the 1960s. The language and situations that have appeared on TV in the past few years could never have been on TV afew two decades ago (The "Shit" episode of South park, for example)

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Barefootsies

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ADL Colin

Who asks for your SS? Only time I can think of being asked for mine is in applying for mortgage loans.

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G-Rotica

You know we let our kids play video games where they go out an kill somone, steal cars, etc. But God forbid they see some flesh or hear a cuss word.

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crockett

I wonder if they will go after that guy that told Dick Chaney to "Go Fuck Himself"

for that matter why not go after Dick himself..

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Snake Doctor

The phone company, the electric company, the cable company, any and all applications for credit. It's asked for on job applications, rental applications, school registration, practically everything.

mardigras

Actually it was Cheney who told Senator Patrick Leahy during the US Senate?s annual photo session to "go fuck yourself", but it was not broadcast, so it doesn't have anything to do with the FCC.