When they’re being polite, Hollywood producers call Washington’s latest indecency rulings “byzantine.”
When they’re not censoring themselves, they have more colorful language for what they see as the capricious censorship of the Federal Communications Commission.
The government shocked broadcasters recently by issuing a record $4 million in fines – including $3.6 million for a teenage orgy scene on the CBS show “Without a Trace” – in a crackdown on TV programming.
The move is a signal from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin that he’s on the side of the anti-indecency activists.
Broadcasters are more baffled than ever by what they see as the regulators’ random, subjective decisions. Tracking down indecency in the ever-expanding media universe, when the majority of Americans pay extra to invite cable and satellite into their homes, is a losing battle. The idea of regulating television with an eye toward hours when kids are in bed seems particularly quaint in the age of VCRs, DVRs and TiVo.
The immediate fallout from the FCC’s action was self-censorship: The WB this week forced executive producer Tom Fontana to cut some sexy scenes from his series about college students in a sex-ed class, “The Bedford Diaries,” which debuted Wednesday.
Fontana did as he was told, then announced he no longer plans to work in network TV. The man whose credits include the acclaimed “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Oz” said he’ll stick to cable. If he can’t include sexy material in a series about college kids’ sex diaries, what’s the point?
Frankly, “Bedford Diaries” is a third- rate show we won’t remember arguing over. But the principle of free speech is worth the fight.
The WB posted an uncut version of the “Bedford Diaries” pilot on its website. Besides images of a girl with her hand in her pants, a same-sex kiss and a nude model in art class, the situation revealed an irony of the FCC’s indecency witch hunt: The children the rules are supposedly designed to protect are adept at finding entertainment online.
Producers say in the future they’re likely to create two versions of their shows, one for broadcast and an “uncut” racier one for DVD and Internet streaming so as not to run afoul of the FCC.
In the age of iPods, MySpace.com and YouTube.com, the FCC’s regulatory powers are less effective than ever.
“This game is up,” said Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “All these regulations and fines are premised on ‘protecting the children,’ but the children have been deserting broadcast TV and radio and flocking to alternative, unregulated media outlets and technologies. The minute the FCC censors something on broadcast TV, it pops up on the Internet in uncensored form and can be downloaded to your video iPod or PlayStation Portable. The FCC is fighting a losing game and unfairly penalizing broadcasters and their adult viewers in the process.”
Among the FCC’s rulings:
An Oprah Winfrey show detailing the sexual practices of teenagers escaped a fine. It was “not presented in a vulgar manner,” the government concluded. Many of the complaints targeting Oprah apparently came from supporters of Howard Stern, who was slapped with larger fines for less explicit language. They were hoping to point to a double standard; the commission pointed to context.
A small educational TV station in San Mateo, Calif., was fined $15,000 for airing the Martin Scorsese documentary “The Blues: Godfathers and Sons” during hours when children might be watching. The FCC agreed with viewer complaints that the variations of “the F and S words” uttered by musicians and others were “vulgar, graphic and explicit.” The FCC previously ruled that the “F” words in “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List” were not indecent in context.
The FCC had no problem with an episode of “Two and a Half Men,” which depicts a hernia examination of a male character by a female doctor. The FCC ruled that “the examination is not eroticized,” but the patient “comments suggestively that the doctor’s hands are warm and asks her out to dinner. … The scene ends with him making comments and sounds indicating that she is painfully squeezing his scrotum.” Apparently, sophomoric sitcom humor is not a problem.
Fans of Triumph the Insult Dog will be glad to know the FCC found the word “poop” is “more puerile than offensive.”
“This policy is now highly illogical, increasingly unworkable and blatantly unfair,” noted Thierer. He predicts a serious legal challenge resulting in a historic First Amendment decision sometime in the next few years.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
