AFA of PA ACTION ALERT
April 9, 2013
Issue
FCC Wants to Allow Expletives and Brief Nudity During “Family Hour”
Details
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants your input on how it should handle expletives and “brief non-sexual displays of nudity”. Remember the FCC only has say over the content of broadcast TV and radio stations. Currently FCC rules state it is a violation to air obscene programming “at any time” and to air indecent programming or profane language “during certain hours.” They claim to have recently cleared 70 percent of its backlog of complaints — translation they dismissed the concerns of about a million Americans without investigating the complaint!
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who will soon be leaving the agency, did not issue any indecency fines in his four-year tenure saying recent Supreme Court decisions left the FCC in legal limbo. However, the Supreme Court left the FCC’s indecency power intact. Last week the FCC issued a request for public comment on a proposal that would focus on penalizing only “egregious” cases. What this means is they want your comments about allowing the f-word, the s-word and frontal female nudity anytime of the day or night.
Action Steps
You have until the end of April to place your comment with the FCC. They require a formal comment be filed on their website, not via email. Here’s the direct link to the Express Form to leave your comment
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/begin?procName=&filedFrom=X
Place 13-86 in the top blank space – -“Proceeding Number.” Fill out the remaining required information. Leave your comments concerning the FCC’s consideration of changing its current rules to make them more lax in permitting expletives and frontal nudity anytime.
NOTE: All information you leave – including name and address — will be publicly available on the FCC website.
