Christian Broadcaster: Cable and Sat Channels Cluttered with Filth
by Jenni Parker and Allie Martin
February 27, 2004
(AgapePress) - The head of a leading Christian and family television network is urging Congress to do more than just crack down on broadcast indecency on the public airwaves. He wants U.S. lawmakers to go after filth on cable and satellite TV as well.PAX-TV chairman Lowell "Bud" Paxon told a House subcommittee that explicit and even pornographic programs are shown on cable and satellite channels every day throughout the day, and that this type of broadcast obscenity needs to be banned. He says most Americans do not want their children to have access to such "filth," and many clergy have told him such satellite and cable pornography is their "number-one family counseling problem."
The head of PAX-TV told the House subcommittee that on a given day right there in Washington, DC, cable and satellite providers carried "a total of 675 hours of filth in one 24-hour period and at all hours of the day."
Paxon says cable and satellite service providers claim they do not have enough room to accommodate channels like PAX and others that feature decent, family-oriented, minority-oriented, and faith-based programming. However, the broadcaster notes, there would be plenty of room if they got rid of the porn channels.
Viewers are fed up, Paxon says, and sick and tired of being inundated with pornographic content at nearly every click of the TV remote control. In his subcommittee testimony, he assured members of Congress that if they needed names on petitions in order "to do something about this pervasive evil, just tell us how many millions -- they will be provided."
Stern Warning Not Enough
Paxon is not alone in his effort to make Congress aware of obscenity and profane content in broadcasting. Even as pro-family activists applaud the decision by Clear Channel Communications to drop notorious radio shock-jock Howard Stern's program from its lineup, decency advocates such as the American Family Association (AFA) and the Parents Television Council (PTC) are keeping up the pressure, hoping broadcasters will force the regularly profane commentator to clean up his act or get kicked off the air.
Clear Channel's action comes in the wake of a recent radio broadcast, during which Stern and a guest described and discussed the sexual activities of socialite Paris Hilton; Stern repeatedly asked several sexually explicit questions and then took calls on the air, including one from a caller who employed a racial slur while asking yet another salacious sexual question.
Stern's show is syndicated by Infinity Broadcasting, a unit of Viacom, Inc., which also owns CBS and MTV. Parents Television Council President Brent Bozell says his group is urging Viacom to follow Clear Channel's lead and force Stern to clean up his act, or else the PTC will demand that the FCC enforce broadcast decency regulations with heavy fines or license revocations. "Stern's filth is completely inappropriate for morning drive radio," Bozell says, "especially at a time when children are listening."
Meanwhile, AFA's OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillionDads.com are asking Viacom's head, Mel Karmazin, to fire Stern for violating Infinity's newly announced "zero tolerance" policy for indecent broadcasting. Randy Sharp, AFA's special projects director, says it is past time for Stern to go. "Mel Karmazin should abide by what he told the Senate subcommittee ... that anyone who violates the company's policy would be fired."
Stern has often tried to cast himself before the media as a champion of free speech. But Sharp feels that this issue is less about free speech than about a breach of the public trust. "I believe with the recent developments with the Super Bowl, that Congress is seeing how highly offended the American viewing public is that the use of the public airwaves is being violated by these giant conglomerate companies," the AFA spokesman says.
Sharp adds that if Stern is not fired, pro-family activists will be asked to file official complaints with the Federal Communications Commission.
