Slashdot once again gives me fodder for today’s blog entry. According to an article at Mediaweek.com, the FCC was receiving approximately 350 complaints a year in 2000 and 2001, up to 14,000 in 2002, and rising as high as 240,000 last year. “According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek,” reads the article, “nearly all indecency complaints in 2003 — 99.8 percent — were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.”The PTC scours the airwaves (so you don’t have to) ears pricked for any troublesome act or statement. Through E-mail Alerts, they will contact subscribers, in titillating vivid language, and instruct them what they should be complaining about. Take for example this alert describing this cockup on September’s Big Brother 5 broadcast on CBS. “Drew says: ‘Oh, [bleeped “shit”;], [bleeped “shit”;].’ Michael passes Drew and goes into the kitchen. He puts his hands near his face and whispers aloud (he is miked): ‘Oh fuck’ [not bleeped].”
Oh great. Now they made me say “fuck” on my website. Shit! I wish there was someone to whom I could complain to keep that vile language off my computer.
But I digress. The PTC has gotten pretty good at spamming the FCC, but not everyone is as fooled as chairman Michael Powell. When Fox recently challenged a complaint, “the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau said it could find only 90 complaints from 23 individuals”. A Fox spokesman goes even further: “All but four of the complaints were identical–and only one complainant professed even to have watched the program.”
This is ridiculous as well was being unacceptable. Therefore, I have signed up to receive their E-mail Alerts, and every time they tell me to parrot one of their complaints to the FCC I will use their webpage form to do exactly the opposite. This is the only way to keep Up With People from returning to our Super Bowl halftime shows.
