Apr 29 2007
Memory Loss at the FCC
Since 1984 federal regulators at the FCC have told parents that the best control for avoiding violent TV is to “turn the TV off.” The FCC’s argument for more than two decades has been that broadcast regulation is based upon “the public’s interest” (marketplace model) rather than the original mandate and narrative of “the public interest” (trusteeship model). Without acknowledging that it is now proposing RE-REGULATION,” the FCC is now trying to get away with trying to get Congress to do what the FCC had the mandate to do… before it redefined the situation and deregulated TV in the 1980s.
The memory the FCC lost about regulating in the public interest for the common good can be found in my unpublished dissertation (1995) — Ideological Narratives and The American Airwaves: Reconstituting the Public Interest.
This work tells the story about how regulatory words came to lose their meaning. Now the shift in regulatory metaphors is coming back to haunt a deregulation-driven agency. But with the broadcast playing field finally leveled, I would argue, that the FCC willl put itself out-of-business without help from Congress. In other words, the FCC which has refused to regulate Cable TV (hence, rising rates), now wants to hide behind Congress with warmed-over and out-of-date TV violence proposals.
With a changed telecommunications landscape, however, Congress may well need a new and different kind of telecommunications regulator. Could it be that FCC now stands for “fainthearted changed choices?”
Surprise! You can’t define “excessively violent” TV programming. In fact, neither Congress nor the FCC has the time to play content police. Perhaps, that’s why we hear swear words being bleeped on one channel but heard loudly on another. Furthermore, just think of all the people who will have to be hired just to respond to the thousands of letters the FCC will get about what is “excessively violent” and what is not. Open the can…. and some funny looking regulatory worms are sure to follow. The FCC has yet to explain, for example, why it regulates some of the channels but not others on our TV sets.
There is a simple solution, however. RE-REGULATE TV again with a mandate that says television should be family programming before 10PM on any kind of TV. That will level the playing field for cable and what will soon be, former over-the-air broadcasters. It’s still a well-kept secret that, thanks to the FCC’s selling of the public airwaves in the 1980s and 1990s, the TV sets we have today are going to be obsolete in two years when over-the-air TV signals go digital. That means the public will be forced to pay more to convert or purchase new TV sets.
Talk about a regulatory nightmare! Rather than getting looped into re-defining the regulatory mandate of the FCC, legislators would do well to take an extremely long look at why the FCC is really urging limits on TV violence. To congratulate the FCC, as some legislators in the Senate have, for issuing an out-of-date TV violence report is to keep the game going… that the FCC matters.
It’s obviously a win-win situation for the FCC: legislators will be blamed no matter which way the regulatory wind on TV violence blows. The pivotal first step to avoid repeating the problems caused by TV deregulation is to examine FCC’s dismantling of key regulations that created the environment for “excessive violence” on TV, in the first place.
2 Responses to “Memory Loss at the FCC”
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Thanks for answering the question I had when I read in the Washington Post last week that the “FCC Report Urges Limits On TV Violence.” Where, I wondered, had the FCC been for the last decade as violence has obviously increased on our television sets? How could the FCC fine
CBS for something most people didn’t see anyway but ignore what was happening on TV before and after Janet Jackson’s wardrobe mishap. You’re right. The FCC hasn’t done what they are already empowered to do. Why give such an impotent agency even more power.
What’s the FCC? Forcing Companies Closed? Isn’t it a bit outdated with all the technological changes in the last two decades? I think the FCC is just a front for Congress to give the illusion that there really is oversight of airwaves owned by the government. Why else is the FCC still selling off parts of the spectrum?