Senator Ted Stevens' first hearing on "Decency" drew an overflow crowd to Room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday morning, and before it was over, six of his fellow senators on the Senate Commerce Committee had joined in to ask questions of the eight witnesses presented in two shifts.
Thursday’s hearing followed up on a pair of "forums" also sponsored by the Alaska Republican Stevens. The forums were held in late November, 2005, and several of the same witnesses had been invited. The senator announced that there were 15 more such hearings on mass communications to come.
Stevens termed the November hearings an incentive to "stimulate voluntary action" on the part of the broadcast, cable and satellite providers to come up with a plan to educate America’s TV-viewing population on the joys of censoring their kids' television programming through the use of the built-in V-chip, and to understand the meanings of the various codes – V, SL, MA, etc. –that program producers use to identify aspects of the content of their programs.
Noting in his opening statement that roughly 85 percent of current TV viewers now receive either cable or satellite programming – an exact reversal of the media landscape at the time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on broadcast decency in the Pacifica case – Stevens advised that, "We should ... act as quickly as possible" to implement family-friendly programming measures, since "There are still some people who believe that mandatory regulations are necessary."
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) seemed to echo that view, stating that "Any program option that gives consumers more choices is, by definition, a good thing," but warned that "voluntary actions are not sufficient."
Rockefeller's focus was more on violence on the tube, and he currently has a bill before the Senate that would curb violent depictions – and sexual ones as well. His bill would require the Federal Communications Commission to determine if existing technologies are effective in protecting children from the "increasing level of ... absolutely indecent and violent content" currently available.
However, "We have tried decades of legislation," Rockefeller said, "sometimes to little effect."
The focus, of course, was children, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) worried aloud about what his grandchildren see on TV, but admitted that on the whole, Americans have "a hefty appetite for salacious material." He noted the $1.2 million fine paid by Fox for airing a computer-blurred image of a couple having sex on its "Married In America" show, and that the Parents Television Council (PTC), whose president, L. Brent Bozell, III, would later testify, had just filed a complaint about an episode of an early 2005 series, "The Inside."
Another attempt at taking the middle road on censorship was proffered by Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who, while admitting that "The First Amendment is very important," nonetheless claimed that "there are reasonable restraints that can be applied."
"We do have standards," he said, "and some of us think those standards have been violated."
Allen opined that the marketplace would support the "family tier" programming packages which several cable and satellite program providers rushed to inaugurate after the November forums, though Lautenberg had expressed dismay that sports programming had not been included in most of the family tier packages that he had seen. Stevens then explained that because so much of sports programming is live, it could not be rated for V-chip censorship, and therefore, in an excess of caution, had been omitted from the family cable packages.
Certainly the day's most eloquent speaker was the first to testify: Former Motion Picture Assn. Of America president Jack Valenti. He cited a recent poll which had asked two questions: Do you find some television programs objectionable? And, Should the government step in to fix the problem of objectionable programming? To the first question, Valenti said that 70 to 80 percent of those surveyed agreed, but that the same percentage disagreed with the second question's proposed solution.
"Every parent has the total power to control all programming entering their homes today," Valenti declared, referring to both the V-chip technology and one technological feature much older: The on/off switch.
However, Valenti advised, the industry must teach parents and others offended by the programs an easy way to use the available technology, and to that end, he had brought together executives from all levels of broadcast and cable/satellite media, hardware manufacturers, technicians and public relations people to create an advertising campaign that would saturate program offerings with instructions on how to use the V-chip to block those very offerings. One of the targets of the campaign, he said, would be the churches, where representatives of the industry would personally go to various congregations and explain both the rating system and V-chip use.
"The best way to deal with this is voluntary," Valenti opined.
Less impressive were the next two witnesses on the first panel, Charles W. Ergen, former chairman and CEO of EchoStar Communications, which owns the DirecTV satellite system, and David Cohen, executive vice-president of Comcast Corporation, a major cable provider.
Ergen claimed that his system was "just giving consumers what they want," both in terms of programming and in terms of the ability to block said programming both by channel and by the ratings of any particular show. He testified that the biggest stumbling block to DirecTV creating family tiers was the "Big 4" program producers, including Disney, Viacom and CBS, which forced cable and satellite providers to carry some channels that, he said, consumers don't want in exchange for allowing the systems to carry more popular channels.
However, while Ergen said that many program producers had given permission to separate some channels into a "family-friendly" package, he also noted that EchoStar's system was set up to offer "a la carte" programming, where subscribers could select to pay for only the channels they want, at any time, if the program producers would allow his service to unbundle their offerings.
Comcast's Cohen also announced a recently-formed 35-channel family tier on his service, and said that Comcast would be spending $130 million in ads over the next six months to inform customers about ratings and V-chip use.
In the Q&A section which followed the first witnesses' presentations, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) noted that according to the PTC, 67 dead bodies had been shown on broadcast TV in prime time during the month of September, 2005, and asked, somewhat rhetorically, "How are they [broadcasters] going to cover Katrina without showing dead bodies? How are they going to cover Iraq without showing dead bodies?" The questions were particularly apt, since all of the family tier packages were by law required to contain all local broadcast channels, all of which carry local and national news programs.
"We're concerned with Hollywood," Inouye stated. "Should we be concerned also with news programming?"
"When you live in a free and loving land, a democracy," Valenti responded, "it gets messy sometimes... You can't block out everything for your child, not in life, not on TV."
Valenti's comment impelled Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) to ask, "Are there discussions among programmers as to what is acceptable in our society?"
Valenti admitted that there were, but that filmmakers and other producers had to follow their own vision, later noting that many TV shows now considered classics such as Hill Street Blues had been excoriated early on for either violent or sexual content, or both.
Sen. Allen was willing to admit that decency standards have changed over the years, but wondered if fines for broadcasters' violations of the existing standards were sufficient, in light of pending legislation to increase those fines?
"I've always been quite nervous about being indicted for a crime whose definition is so vague," Valenti responded, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court can't even define what obscenity is. "Before we assign fines, shouldn't we define what the offense is?"
Valenti also expressed amazement at the furor that had erupted after the split-second view of Janet Jackson's breast during the 2004 Super Bowl.
When it came Sen. Mark Pryor's (D-Ark.) turn, he questioned what advantage family tiers had over a la carte program offerings? Comcast's Cohen responded that his studies had shown that the net result of a la carte program offering would be "less choice for the consumer, fewer channels and a higher cost."
Since the first panel had run long, the second set of panelists moved into their seats quickly. The first speaker, Bruce Reese, joint board chairman of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, declared that "Real First Amendment issues are at stake," but seemed disappointed that the FCC had levied no broadcast indecency fines in 2005, down from a high of 240 just two years previously. He testified that, in his view, cable and satellite providers should be forced to have the same restrictive standards as broadcast media, but decried the self-censorship many providers engaged in to avoid possible FCC license revocation proceedings.
PTC's Bozell launched his attack immediately, claiming that he was "sick and tired of graphic sex" on broadcast TV. Decency standards, he said, are the law, and that law should be enforced. He noted that two bills which would raise the maximum fine that indecent programmers could be forced to pay has already passed the U.S. House, and that "The Senate must pass the Broadcast Decency Act immediately."
Bozell described the current TV rating system as "arbitrary, capricious ... a mess ... but even if it were accurate, so what? [It] does nothing to stem the outpouring of raunch."
Bozell then described certain scenes from popular TV fare as Nip & Tuck, The Shield and South Park in such a way as to make it appear that the shows had shown necrophilia, fellatio and anal gerbil insertion, even though such actions were merely implied during the actual shows.
"The ultimate parental responsibility or right," he declared, "is the right to choose what is aired on his or her TV set."
Martin Franks, executive vice-president of CBS, spoke next, assuring the senators that all shows on his network were reviewed by both the standards & practices and legal departments before being aired, but noted that statistics have shown that most viewers don't want to see the type of "family hour" programming mandated in the 1960s and '70s.
"They're changing the channel," Franks said. "Looking back lovingly on the past that cannot be recreated does nothing to address the problems of today."
Alan Rosenberg, president of the Screen Actors Guild, also spoke, but his main concerns seemed to be that individual performers not be subject to FCC fines simply for doing their jobs, and noted that many acting contracts contain a morals clause, so that if the performer is caught in some compromising situation, their employment could be terminated.
The final panelist was Jeff McIntyre, legislative and public affairs officer for the American Psychological Assn., who had helped create the current TV rating system. His main concern was violent content of TV shows, claiming that exposure to such content could have a detrimental effect on younger viewers – a claim that he said was backed up by numerous studies. Earlier studies, however, had shown that not to be the case.
"A detailed, content-based rating system" is necessary, he opined, but noted that any rating system can be undermined by the advertising used to market the shows.
During the Q&A session which followed the second panel's testimony, CBS's Franks cogently noted that, "I don't think a fines bill [for indecency] is going to help parents very much," which led Bozell to claim that according to Pew Research study, "Seventy-five percent of the public wants greater enforcement of the [decency] law."
However, when Inouye tried to get the panelists to define "decency," and noted that he thought that some of the dresses worn during the Golden Globes awards were as revealing as Janet Jackson's SuperBowl revelation, no one had an answer, though Bozell opined that he thought depictions could be divided into the "indecent" and the "egregiously indecent," and that the FCC fines should be targeted to the latter.
