Senators Recommend 'Half-a-Mil' Fine for Broadcasters' Indecency Violations
by Jody Brown
March 10, 2004
(AgapePress) - If a Senate committee has its way, a single indecent utterance on the public airwaves could cost a broadcaster as much as a half-a-million dollars. And if a family-values activist had his way, American families could choose their cable TV stations on the cafeteria plan.National Religious Broadcasters president Frank Wright is applauding congressional moves to severely punish indecency on television and radio. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has unanimously voted to increase the maximum fine for indecent programming from $27,500 to $500,000. The Senate bill would count each utterance as a violation, rather than each program -- and it would cap the maximum fine for a 24-hour period at $3 million.
Wright tells Associated Press that he is pleased that a Senate committee has approved half-a-million-dollar fines for broadcast indecency, calling it "a pretty powerful statement" that the lawmakers are serious about the Federal Communications Commission having the kind of tools it needs to enforce the indecency laws that are already in place. He says he expects the tougher fines to be a serious deterrent to indecent broadcasts.
"The fact that the penalty is so high means that it will probably not have to be enforced on a regular basis -- and that's what was lacking before," he says. "With the previous penalty structure, the fines that broadcasters had to pay were nothing more than a small, what I like to call, 'indecency tax.'"
The NRB head says the previous, smaller fines were just considered a part of doing business. "They paid the fines to the FCC to get the [agency] of their backs," Wright says. "But $500,000 is a significant number -- and I believe we are already seeing many broadcasters changing their standards and their code of ethics in what they will allow their people to do. All of that seems to be a reflection that this is now serious money at risk."
The bill would also direct the FCC to begin license revocation procedures for a third indecency violation. According to AP, Wright has lobbied for that provision, calling it a needed "death penalty" for irresponsible broadcasters.
"I had been in favor of that for a long time," he explains. "When you've got people who are serial offenders who just go from one offense to the next and just pay the fine, I think there comes into question a legitimate discussion as to whether or not they are operating their broadcast license in the public interest."
Wright predicts that an occasional license revocation might make an impression on broadcasters and convince them to toughen decency standards. "I think that if there were a revocation of license from time to time, it would be a very rare thing," the NRB president says. "It would be something that would only done to set an example, and others would see quickly that this is a serious matter."
The latest vote came a week after a House committee passed a similar bill, which could be voted on by the full House later this week.
Cable TV à la Carte?
The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee heard recently from a family-values media advocate about the glut of smut on broadcast and cable television. In a letter to Arizona Senator John McCain in early March, Brent Bozell -- founder and president of the Parents Television Council (PTC) -- informed the Republican lawmaker that "as bad as broadcast TV has gotten, it's nothing compared with what children consume day and night" on basic cable.
According to Bozell, basic cable has become "a kind of Pandora's box" for families because along with the good, such as the Discovery Channel and the ABC Family Channel, comes the bad -- such as MTV, FX, and Comedy Central. The end result, he says, is that in order to have access to educational and family-oriented networks, parents are forced to pay for channels they do not want and "that actually make their jobs as a parent much more difficult."
In his letter, the PTC president suggests an option. He suggests that McCain and his committee members urge the cable industry to offer consumers cable subscriptions à la carte, choosing and paying only for the channels they desire.
"It is summarily wrong for the cable providers to force consumers to pay for a product they not only don't want, but which they find morally offensive or even harmful to their children," Bozell writes.
Bozell tells McCain to expect vehement opposition from the industry should the committee make such a proposal. "They will assert economic disaster to the industry, technical infeasibility, and constitutional violations," he says, "but these allegations are false." Bozell says his group reviewed the economic and technical issues and concluded that both assertions are "wholly without merit."
Republican Congressman Tom DeLay of Texas made a similar recommendation while speaking at the recent National Religious Broadcasters convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. He said cable TV operators should "unbundle" their channel packages and give subscribers greater choice over which channels come into their homes so customers can avoid indecent programming.
DeLay said he was shocked at home one evening by programming on FX, E! Entertainment Television, MTV, and BET. "The people that don't want it in their home, they should be able to say no," DeLay told the broadcasters. Later he told reporters he hoped the industry would act voluntarily.
