Time to Reclaim the FCC

Recently @QueenofSpain (blogger Erin Kotecki Vest) was stirring up trouble over on twitter as she is wont to do.  This time it was ab0ut an article regarding pushing some limits:

They also raise questions about the placement of “30 Rock” as an anchor of what an NBC executive, Ben Silverman, has designated the “family hour.”

Erin's outraged stemmed over Silverman proclaiming a family hour and then airing shows in that time slot which are arguably not family friendly fare.

The article is badly written and therefore I think Erin's outrage is misplaced.  Silverman has not designated a family hour.  The so-called family hour is a practice the FCC asked the major broadcast networks to voluntarily adopt in 1975 after complaints about violence and sex being broadcast.  NBC did not create "family hour" nor do they (or any other network) currently market the 8:00 time slot as family hour. 

Also, the sanctity of family hour was violated long ago.  I remember some outrage about a sitcom in the 1980's where a child character said "you suck" during the family hour.  Some were convinced that this certainly heralded the demise of western civilization.  Time has shown we had so much further to go.

The real travesty in my mind is that outrage of any sort expressed to the FCC no longer results in any action in favor of the community and citizens.  Prior to the vote on allowing further media consolidation thousands of citizens at hearings around the country and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle urged FCC chairman Kevin Martin to not press forward with this move.  And Martin pushed it through anyway.  The FCC has become a lackey serving corporate interests rather than acting in service to the citizens of the United States who own the airwaves and grant corporations the right to broadcast over them as long as they do so with consideration to our needs and concerns.  They have no capitalist right to profit from the public good we lease to them without regard to our voices.

When I tweeted this view as best I could in 140 characters, @Stranahan (videomaker Lee Stranahan) expressed concern that I was perhaps sliding down the slippery slope towards advocating censorship.  I certainly don't but it's hard to explain in a tweet, so I'm here blogging.  My desire for greater FCC control is not out of a belief that we need the FCC or the government in any way to save us from the horrors of MILF Island at 8:00 pm.  Rather it's that I believe in the notion that the public owns and has a right to be the boss of the airwaves.

Stranahan's other concern is that such regulation invariably focuses on censoring sex rather than violence.  True that.  We are a prudish society and whether it's the MPAA, the government or parents up in arms that little Bobby saw Janet Jackson's nipple at half time, too many Americans care much more about having the kiddies eyes shielded from naked body parts than from bloody body parts.

Still, I believe that if we want the FCC to pay attention to Americans when we say we want net neutrality (300 people showed up at Stanford yesterday to tell the FCC and Comcast to stop throttling) and do not want corporate consolidation of news outlets which further limits the independent points of views we hear and that we want local news outlets to cover local news and not just run AP newswire pieces (which are increasingly biased and crappy), then we have to allow for our prim and proper neighbors to also say they don't want talk of tits and boners at 8 pm and not expressing concern over simulated machine gun deaths, autopsies and The Donald's combover.

The latest example of the need for a mechanism for holding the media's feet to the fire when they are not acting in the public interest is the recent presidential debate on ABC.   ABC is ignoring the tens of thousands of complaints it has received about the non-issue questions asked by claiming people actually are deeply concerned with nonsensical symbolic tabloid drama.  Baratunde Thurston (of Jack and Jill Politics and Good Crime Think) suggests ABC's broadcast license should be revoked.

I know that will never happen but perhaps the FCC can help we the people compel ABC to actually act in the public interest should they ever have the fortune to air another debate especially one riddled with commercials and highly profitable coming at a time when ratings for such debates are at a record high.

Comments

[Lee Stranahan]

I just found this, sorry I'm late to the game...

I still don't like the idea of the government being involved in content issues. Can you think of many examples of when it's worked out well?

Do you not think it's censorship? Or are you okay with censorship? Would you want the same standards applied to the internet?

[Maria Niles]

Hi Lee,

Thanks for your comments and you're not late, I am - even though we talked about this a while back, I just put the post up.

To your questions, I am absolutely not OK with censorship. And I certainly understand you being wary of the possibility of anything that smacks of it. I also do not think the same standards apply to radio, broadcast television and the internet - they are different beasts and FCC regulation applies differently

To me, censorship would be the government limiting or outlawing content production in any way. I don't view regulating the type of content that can be shown and the hours it can be shown at on public airwaves to be censorship. And although I would say complain to the FCC if you were offended by NBC showing 30 Rock at 8:00 (which, to be clear, was not Erin's complaint), even in that case I don't think there is anything they could or would do because it doesn't break any rule or regulation.

Granted, to a large degree even broadcast standards are fairly moot with the advent of the v-chip. But zero regulation would mean that ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX & the CW would be free to show hardcore pornography (both the sex and violent torture kinds)all night and day. While they might be tempted to given that it's highly profitable, I appreciate that they cannot (and that I can choose to purchase access to those things on the internet or cable) and that they are required to have at least some programming that is in the interest of the communities which they serve.

And where I do think FCC regulation works out well is back when they actually enforced local content airing (they stopped when we stopped caring) and when they didn't allow cross ownership of media outlets. The prospect of a world where Rupert Murdoch owns all the newspapers, radio stations and television stations frightens me far more than the FCC having the ability to fine CBS for Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

Clearly that resulted in the government affecting content as evidenced by the mostly crappy Super Bowl half time shows since (Prince was pretty good) but I don't see that as censorship. Producers who want to create pay-per-view alternative programming with strippers are still free to do so because there is no law that they cannot.

I'll ask you - do you see a role for the FCC? Would you want net neutrality left to the market forces of effective monopolies? How would you reshape the agency so that it isn't engaging in censorship while still protecting the public interest in granting broadcast licenses?

Thanks again for your comments!