FCC Fines Seen Bringing Self-Censorship

Writer Tom Fontana said he was asked to change the show, on college student sexuality, even though WB had approved it. He balked, he said: “Next Wednesday, I will sit down to watch a show that I have not seen, and that’s a first time for me in my entire career… I don’t have to be complicit in the destruction of something I don’t think is indecent.”

The show, premiering March 29, drew fire from a group pushing “family values” whose earlier attacks led NBC to kill a program. The American Family Assn. (AFA) said the Bedford pilot contains explicit sexual content, urging advertisers to press WB affiliates not to air it (March 23 p16). “Early previews for the show depict a girl masturbating, two females kissing and other sexual activity,” said an AFA statement. AFA officials had no further comment. NBC yanked The Book of Daniel after AFA blasted what it called anti-Christian bias (CD Jan 25 p17).

WB made the changes “out of an abundance of caution,” it told us in a statement. An official declined to discuss the reasons for the edits and wouldn’t discuss AFA’s complaints.

The groups’s strategy of going after less popular shows may again pay off, said Matthew Felling of the Center for Media & Public Affairs. AFA isn’t pursuing popular shows with racy content including Desperate Housewives because the group would have little success in convincing stations not to run them, said Felling: “It’s an incremental success strategy. They are trying to build momentum through fledgling shows and build up their momentum for future battles.” The Commission is likely to react to groups’ indecency complaints with an onslaught of fines, said Felling: “The FCC has been meeting with interest groups for the past year… We're in the quiet before the storm.”

Fontana, industry executives and activists expect more program tweaks, since $4 million in fines proposed by the FCC don’t clearly delineate what is and isn’t acceptable. The Commission’s failure to draw a bright line on profanity led Comr. Adelstein to dissent partially from the orders. Said Fontana: “I guess the FCC is saying, ‘You can’t tell full stories anymore, you can only tell partial stories.’ That’s what scares me.”

The fines could have a “chilling effect” on broadcast schedules, said an executive. “The more you look at what the Commission did, the more confusing it becomes,” an industry executive said. One “radical” departure from precedent is the FCC’s decision to punish a show for sex scenes airing in the last hour of primetime, said the executive. The show, CBS’s Without a Trace, generated most of last week’s fines.

The big chill may benefit cable, which can present racier material without fear of decency rules, media activists said. “Production companies, broadcasters and creative teams don’t want to compromise that vision and those stories in order to satisfy the FCC,” Jonathan Rintels, exec. dir.-Center for Creative Voices in Media, said: “People like Steven Bochco have been making their series for [expanded basic] cable, and shows like The Shield are being made for cable.”

Meanwhile, WSBT-TV South Bend, Ind. said the FCC erroneously fined it for showing Without a Trace after prime time. The Commission incorrectly “assumed” stations in the state were in the Eastern time zone, not Central, said a letter to Enforcement Bureau official William Davenport. An Enforcement Bureau official declined to comment.

Fear of the indecency tag discourages investment in networks, stations and productions, David Honig, exec. dir.- Minority Media & Telcom Council, said: “What is a greater market entry barrier than uncertainty about whether you can operate a station without losing the creative people?” The FCC is flying in the face of its mandate to remove such barriers, said Honig.