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FCC to Require Broadcasters to Keep Tapes of Shows

Posted by simoniker on from the he-said-what? dept.

The Importance of writes "Under current FCC rules, in order to make an indecency complaint about a broadcast you have to provide "a significant excerpt from the program or a full or partial tape or transcript of the program." However, broadcasters aren't required to keep a tape of their broadcasts so, rarely, an indecency complaint gets dismissed for lack of evidence. But that is going to change. The FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [PDF] [TXT] that will require broadcasters to maintain recordings of their broadcasts for 60-90 days. The FCC is also considering reducing what you must claim in order to enter a complaint, thus opening the floodgates for indecency complaints by groups like the Parents Television Council, which is already keeping the FCC censors busy. Doesn't the government have better things to do?"

10 of 531 comments (clear)

  1. I don't understand ... by Burb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is it censorship if you require the broadcaster to keep a record of what was transmitted?
    And if a broadcaster has something to say, whether contentious or not, why would you not want to keep a record of it?

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    1. Re:I don't understand ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When someone accuses you, he's the one who has to bring the evidence. You don't have to incriminate yourself. The new requirement is not censorship per se, but it helps those who want to control what other people can see, simply by shifting some of the costs to the broadcasters.

    2. Re:I don't understand ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the point is that of course all broadcasters already keep recordings of all their output, so this is a no-op for them.

      It also does not seem that unreasonable to me that, in return for being granted use of the airwaves, you need to have an audit trail of what you have transmitted to 200 million people.

      Too much knee-jerking going on here. The country is not run on principle it is run on pragmatism, and that is the way it should be.

    3. Re:I don't understand ... by beuges · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That was my immediate reaction as well, until I realised that if you're watching a show on tv, or listening to something on the radio, which ends up having 'questionable' material, you wouldn't have had the foresight to record it on the off-chance that the show you are watching/listening to would be 'questionable'. How often have radio DJ's been given formal warnings for inadvertedly swearing on air - it happens, and people phone in and complain, but it's very unlikely that someone is sitting and recording the show just in case the dj says something colourful.

      Having said that, I personally am against the rush to censor everything that we see and hear :)

    4. Re:I don't understand ... by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The country is not run on principle it is run on pragmatism, and that is the way it should be.

      It may have escaped your notice, but the one thing that America has always claimed that set it apart from other countries is that it is founded on principle.

      KFG

  2. Why don't they call it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The 'Janet Jackson Nipple Law'...

    ..it has a nice ring to it :-)

  3. Quite usefull by Zappa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Working for a radio station in Austria, we have about the same rules here (90 days, real airplay), and we saw it as quite a pain originally. We kept the records on mp3s wich got deleted after the "holdtime".
    One day we got sued from a company that a moderator had said "offensive things" about them and at court the mp3s were the key to show that this wasnt true. Since then we see this also as a mechanism to be able to show what really got broadcast in situations like this.

  4. I'm shocked by your attitude by not_a_product_id · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Doesn't the government have better things to do?"

    Are you suggesting that education, health, freedom and peace are more important than keeping Janet Jackson's breast out of sight? You damn liberal!
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    We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience

  5. Who does it help? by lachlan76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From what I can tell, only a minority of the population would actually care enough about TV to actually complain. Most people just turn off the tv or watch something else when something's on that they don't like.

    Back, a long time ago, (I think), there were many, many complaints about a lingerie poster with Kylie Minogue in it. A couple of hundred got through, out of about 20000, IIRC. Even if that seems significant, more people entered a competition to win the poster than the number of people who complained.

    Why make laws to fix a problem when it can be fixed with an ON/OFF switch? I for one am sick of these 'think of the children!!!' laws, which don't help the children at all. Being 14, I don't think that restricting content or information from getting through is a good way of doing things. My parents have tried to give me certain opinions my whole life. Trying to censor information isn't the way to make things good. Especially when you can't stop it after it has been done.

  6. What I don't understand is... by fataugie · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why something said on the Howard Stern show back 2 1/2 years ago is all of a sudden something that needs to be investigated. 2 years ago, no one had a problem with it. Why now?

    I'll tell you why

    Because whoever is behind this shit sees the blood in the water and is now looking at past tapes to see if they can apply Today's standards to yesterday's broadcasts.

    I think it stinks and is completely unfair.

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    WTF? Over?