One of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators wants cable and satellite broadcasting subject to the same indecency standards and fines now applicable to network television and radio.
"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) told the National Association of Broadcasters March 1. “I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air.”
Stevens added that there should be “some” decency standard for cable and satellite while “no one wants censorship,” and vowed to push such legislation in the Senate, including the possible adding of such language to a pending bill to ramp up indecency fines for over-the-air broadcasters.
“We spend millions to promote abstinence [for youth] while the public airwaves are increasingly promoting sex,” Stevens told the NAB. “Now, broadcasters alone are not to blame, cable is often worse, very worse. Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area.”
If Stevens gets his way it could spell trouble for people like Howard Stern, who is moving his controversial radio show to satellite service Sirius. While it isn’t known at this writing what Stern has to say about Stevens’s proposal, he has waged war with the Federal Communications Commission over indecency enforcement.
He isn’t exactly alone. Broadcast industry officials are believed to be preparing a legal challenge to the FCC over the issue, with some saying the challenge is likely to be spearheaded by television interests, considering how heavily radio leaders were fined—some over Stern’s show—within the past year or two.
Some reports indicated Fox Broadcasting just might lead any new such challenge, in the wake of all 169 affiliates being fined over an alleged sexually suggestive scene in the Fox series Married By America. Those reports suggested Fox might use that incident to raise differences between the treatment afforded over-the-air broadcasters and the cable and satellite broadcasters.
Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters has petitioned the FCC to include indecency provisions in the commission’s rules governing satellite radio. While the FCC denied that petition, Stevens said he might be willing to take that case to the U.S. Supreme Court, “test(ing) the waters over Congress’s authority to impose limits on subscription services,” according to radio trade publication FMQB.
If he does, he’d get support from radio’s biggest corporate entity, Clear Channel, whose executive vice president and chief legal officer Andrew Levin has said Congress and the FCC alike “should be troubled that the current law unwittingly creates a safe haven for indecent programming on other media platforms, including satellite radio. Unfortunately these outlets are fast becoming the wild west for sexually explicit programming. The law needs to catch up to technology or our children will be the ultimate victims."
