Who runs the FCC?

[CHIMO]

The news that 99.9% of the 240,000 complaints received last year by the US Federal Communications Commission originated with members of the pressure group Parents Television Council (PTC) came as no surprise to me. You can be sure that when 350 complaints in 2001 rises to 14,000 the year after, and nearly a quarter of a million the year after that, there is an organised campaign going on. What I find amazing is that nobody seems to have cottoned on to this until the figures were published in the trade magazine Mediaweek.

Every country needs a media regulator, because otherwise a minority of people will abuse the power of the printed word and the microphone. But in a well-ordered system, there is an ongoing dialogue between the broadcasters and the regulators, and from time to time parameters are shifted to reflect changes in social attitudes. There are sometimes disputes, because what is and isn't acceptable can't be precisely defined in advance, and there will always be grey areas. But, if the system is working properly, the number of high profile disputes in a given year will be quite small. But what has happened since Janet Jackson inadvertently (one assumes) bared a breast for a few seconds at the Superbowl, is hard to believe.

Panic stations
Suddenly, TV broadcasters - who often produce programmes months in advance of their transmission date - are being fined huge amounts for what would be, in Europe, considered minor offences at the most. The Federal Communications Commission - just five people in a country of 300 million - have suddenly decided to move the goalposts without any prior warning, forcing many broadcasters into panic as they make last-minute changes to schedules and re-edit finished programmes to avoid potential fines.

What next?
I find it hard to get my head round the notion that, in the country which has always billed itself as the world's greatest democracy, the thrust of national media policy can be decided by a single pressure group representing less than 1 percent of the population. In the meantime, now that the situation has been brought into the open by Mediaweek, it will be interesting to see if the FCC continues its policy of fines at the same level, or scales it down. My hunch is that the FCC will not openly admit to any policy changes, but that in 2005 we'll see a significant drop in the number of fines.

http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/features/media/features/fcc041216.html