The new television season is upon us. Soon, organizations like the Parents Television Council will begin writing letters to the Federal Communications Commission, insisting that it crack down on all this televised smut.
But when it comes to content regulation, the FCC is finding itself on the brink of obsolescence. Although the PTC is pushing heavily for greater control of the airwaves, giving the FCC purview over cable content for example, both technological advances and deregulatory legislation of the 1990s should make this difficult.
In 1992, Congress passed the Cable Act, giving the FCC regulatory, price-fixing control over the cable industry. It was a brief flirtation with cable regulation.
Congress reversed course in 1996, setting a more deregulatory tone. Not surprisingly, Rep. Peter DeFazio’s (D-Ore.) mustache bristled at talk of deregulation. “A funny thing happens when you deregulate a monopoly, consumers get shafted,” he told the Medford, Ore. Mail Tribune. DeFazio couldn’t have been less prescient.
Again in 1998, Congress gave satellite television carriers the ability to provide local affiliate programming to their consumers. Consumers were given more choices and better content. We entered the golden age of cable television, with more channels and better content. Consumers got more bang for their buck.
Giving the FCC regulatory purview over all aspects of television is a terrible idea. It is ultimately bad for consumers. The FCC is a regulatory bureaucracy that for 30 years has overstepped its intended mission.
A little history: An act of Congress established the FCC in 1934 as a successor to the Federal Radio Commission, established in 1927 by the Radio Act. Originally, the FCC was charged with regulating non-federal-governmental use of the radio spectrum, as well as interstate and international communications. The federal government was concerned that a lack of regulation would lead to anarchy on the airwaves. Licensing radio stations controlled the radio spectrum.
And this was how the FCC operated from the 1930s to the 1970s. It was the governmental agency tasked with breaking up monopolies, such as NBC in the 1940s, and setting licensing guidelines. In the 1970s, the FCC shifted its focus to content regulation.
By the late 1960s, the movie industry had undergone a decade of underperformance. The main reason was the emergence of television. People began staying at home to watch television for free, rather than paying money to attend movies. During this time, the movie industry operated under a strict self-censorship guideline known as the Hays Code, which kept movies morally grounded, bloodless, and vulgarity free. The MPAA was created in 1966 as a revision of the Hays Code, thus creating a series of ratings for movies: G, PG, and R. In 1984, PG-13 was added. Movies became more permissive in the 1970s, but they also became better. The industry was no longer self-censoring itself the way it had for five decades.
Unlike the movie industry, the television industry still self-censors itself, because otherwise networks will receive fines. But according to the Center for Creative Voices in the Media, the FCC’s guidelines need to be “crystal clear” in order to be “consistently applied.” They are not. But the threat of large fines is enough to give most network executives apoplexies of fear.
The FCC has always been a political tool, but for the past 30 years the FCC has become overly politicized. Its focus has slowly shifted from licensing and monopoly concerns (both debatable on their own right) to radio and television content, eroding its relevance, as many people now view it as a censoring assemblage of prudish bluenoses. Organizations like the Parents Television Council and the Media Resource Center bait the FCC into quixotic battles against television decency, often using the trite think-of-the-children plea.
Thus, the PTC pushes for harsher fines for televised indecency. Their targets are no longer the broadcast networks that the FCC used to govern – networks like NBC, CBS, and ABC that operate on the supposedly “public” airwaves – but cable channels like MTV and Comedy Central. But television is no longer a free “right”; instead, it’s a bought good, and the FCC has no right to control what we choose to purchase, especially if we have the ability to censor it ourselves.
Nonetheless, The PTC wants to usher the FCC into our homes, so that it can regulate cable-distributed content. The PTC is the most paternalistic supporter of cable television censorship.
Today, the majority of households pay for cable service. Most televisions manufactured nowadays don’t have built in antennae, making the supposedly public airwaves a notion of the past. However, with technological advances like the V Chip, TV ratings, and satellite parental controls, it’s easier for parents to guard their children from supposedly indecent content, including, one imagines, the 700 Club.
Nonetheless, the PTC wrongly believes that the FCC has ultimate control over everything on television. The FCC is fast losing its relevance as a result of technological advances and pro-consumer policies. This terrifies the prigs at the PTC. But as technology progresses and new media flourish, the FCC’s role as arbiter of good taste must subside. Its narrow focus on the issue is ultimately bad for television content and bad for consumer choice.
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