The FCC has had a busy year. A few of the many controversies and ensuing dust-ups:
•February 2004: Janet Jackson's breast — which inadvertently, she still insists, appeared for an instant during halftime of last year's Super Bowl — was the catalyst for the new FCC focus on TV indecency. The agency ended up fining CBS corporate parent Viacom $550,000; the company has appealed. One resulting development that has been accepted, largely without complaint, is that most live staged TV shows now carry a 10-second delay. And this past Sunday's Super Bowl? No such fretting with super-safe Paul McCartney.
•March: In his first days as FCC chairman, Michael Powell said he hoped to avoid becoming a "nanny" of the airwaves and instead wanted to facilitate the growth of new technologies. When it came to his combative relationship with radio personality Howard Stern, he ended up doing both. After the FCC fined Clear Channel Communications $495,000 for a Stern show that discussed anal sex, among other related subjects, the company took him off its stations. That led the radio host to look for greener, unregulated pastures. Stern's five-year, $500 million contract with Sirius may turn out to be one of the most important developments in the growth of satellite radio.
•November: In an ABC Monday Night Football opening promo, an apparently naked Nicollette Sheridan, star of Desperate Housewives, jumped into the arms of Philadelphia Eagles star Terrell Owens. The FCC received complaints but did not need to act. ABC, realizing that it had crossed the line of public sensibilities, quickly apologized for the spot. Never mind that sex-related innuendo is the norm in NFL telecasts — with camera shots of suggestively-clad cheerleaders or frequent ads for Levitra, an erectile aid.
•December: Fox announced that it had blurred the rear end of a baby, Stewie, in an episode of its show Family Guy, so as not to risk an FCC fine. "We are attempting to do our best to find our way on this very complicated issue," Fox programming chief Gail Berman said last month. Perhaps, but that editing decision could just as easily have been a clever way of tweaking the FCC. In other contexts, Fox pays less attention to where the line of decency lies. The reality show Married by America included a bachelor party where men licked whipped cream off of a topless, albeit pixilated, stripper's body. Fox not only had to pick up the tab for that evening's wild hijinks, but also had to pay a $1.2 million FCC fine.
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