FCC to Start Inquiry on Parental Controls Across Media
The FCC soon will begin a review of parental-control technology, as required by Congress (CD Nov 19 p4), a commission official said at a conference on children’s media. The FCC must start the review by Monday and it will issue a notice of inquiry, said Mary Beth Murphy, chief of the Media Bureau’s policy division. The commission may look at whether filtering technologies work with ratings that don’t come from content creators, she said at the Kaiser Family Foundation event, and a report to Congress is due Aug. 29: “The goal here is to seek comment on blocking technologies across a wide array of platforms.”
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The sponsor of the legislation requiring the study of advanced blocking technologies for cable, satellite and wireless devices that transmit or receive video or audio programming said he thinks the FCC should also look at the Web. “The days of the traditional television set are gone,” said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. “You don’t want things to be like the Wild West,” and “there is a role for the government,” he said. Pryor said he’s sensitive to the First Amendment considerations. “The FCC from my standpoint should at least look at it.”
Julius Genachowski, expected to become the FCC chairman, wants the industry to “empower” parents by giving them “tools” to know what their kids are watching, said Alan Simpson, policy director of Common Sense Media. “We're going to see someone who believes in market-based approaches,” Simpson said of Genachowski, who sits on the group’s board. If industry fails to act, Genachowski may think “government does have a role,” Simpson said. “Rather than uniform ratings, the question may be about ratings that work.”
Media matters such as indecency won’t get much attention soon on Capitol Hill, because lawmakers are dealing with the recession and foreign policy, said Colin Crowell, an aide to Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. Some speakers agreed that the Supreme Court’s decision in FCC v. Fox, on whether broadcasters can be fined for airing a single curse word during a show, may dictate whether indecency receives attention from the FCC and Congress. If the commission loses the cases, that may bring increased attention to TV indecency, Crowell said.
Indecency will be a concern of the administration of President Barack Obama, though the issue “becomes less of a culture war and more of a children’s health issue,” said President Tim Winter of the Parents Television Council, which files indecency complaints with the FCC. He said he thinks Congress will act to make ratings more effective. Changes in the ratings system could complicate them and make them hard for parents to understand, said Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of the NAB. He said worries that broadcasters “are dying to drop f-bombs in prime time” are baseless, as can been seen from shows that air at hours when FCC indecency rules don’t apply and don’t have foul language.