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Attempt to Apply Decency Standards to Cable/Satellite Television

Posted by Zonk on from the i'm-paying-for-my-klingons-dangit dept.

bigtallmofo writes "Reuters is reporting that Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (Senator from Alaska) is pushing for decency standards to apply to cable television and subscription satellite TV and radio. You may recall Senator Stevens for voting against a measure to criticize the FCC in 2003 for loosening its broadcast ownership restrictions. Maybe he thinks profanity provides an unfair advantage to his broadcast-company constituents?" We touched on this last year, in the attempt to apply decency standards to satellite radio.

5 of 709 comments (clear)

  1. Do as we do in Europe: by Peden · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Transmit the sattelite TV from another country. Easy-peasy, no problem.

    1. Re:Do as we do in Europe: by N3koFever · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You wouldn't be complaining if you'd seen American TV. Commercials out of every orifice (the legal limit on commercials for every hour of programming in the US is 20 minutes; in the UK it's 7 minutes), they're not allowed to swear (you can be fined for saying "god damn"!), and any nudity is a definite no-no.

      Comparing that to the UK, I seem to remember the BBC showing American Pie a few weeks back - it was broadcast unencrypted on network TV with no commercials, and no cuts at all, including the full webcam scene. And who can forget that they broadcast Jerry Springer The Opera on a Saturday night complete with all the profanities (3,168 "fucks" and 297 "cunts" according to Mediawatch), and Jesus admitting to being "a bit gay".

      Not bad for a country with no written guarantee of free speech. But then again the US consistently shows how little that means.

  2. Better Solution by nacturation · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Create a subscription channel called SCAF: the Shit, Cunt, Asshole, Fuck channel. Broadcast nothing but those four words over and over again. Subscribers can pay something like 25 cents a month to get it -- the money counts as a contribution towards freedom of speech. Then, if something like this is ever passed, it will result in the channel being 100% censored since there's nothing decent left to transmit. It'd certainly make for an interesting court case to challenge the constitutionality (oh, how I love made-up words) of these types of regulations.

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  3. Re:Go all the way by computational+super · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There was an interesting case (don't have any links, so you'll have to take my word for it) about something similar that happened here in Dallas a few years back. There are some "photo-artists" (Jock Sturges, Robert Mapplethorpe and Sally Mann, to name a few) whose art includes pictures from European nudist beaches, replete with underage subjects. You can legally buy collections of their photos at Barnes & Noble (and, presumedly, other booksellers)... evidently, some right-wing talk-show host got his panties in a knot over this, and encouraged his listeners to go into the bookstores, find those books, and rip them up. A lot of them did, and IIRC, were never prosecuted for anything (neither was B&N for selling what this right-wing talk show host considered CP).

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  4. But it works! by WhiplashII · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What is even weirder is that putting in the astericks really does make a difference - I personally don't swear much, but the "niceness" of swear words in a public forum is really increased by using astericks in my opinion.

    In fact, I am not at all put out by your statement as you wrote it. But if you had put the actual vowels in, I would have considered you an annoying kid.

    That is really weird!

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