I'm furious. I'm furious, and offended actually. Furious because I haven't known about this, and offended because a certain group known as the Parents Television Council has single handedly changed how we listen to radio, simply for their own preferences. I knew the PTC was a huge factor in driving FCC indecendy complaints, but I didn't realize the extent of their ridiculousness - nor of the inaccuracies of the FCC's reporting system. All the FCC crackdowns in the past couple years since the Janet Jackson incident occured, could very well be one big lie.
What am I talking about? Read on.In the first quarter of 2004, incidently when the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction occurred, the FCC began counting complaints multiple times if it was sent to more than one office within the FCC. That's right, add a CC field and the complaint has been doubled. The change in fact had the capability of increasing complaints by a factor of 5, 6 or even 7 times the original number recorded.
How can the FCC get away with that? Simply by adding a quick little acknowledgement, that "the reported counts may also include duplicate complaints or contacts," to the FCC Quarterly Report.
Offended yet?
How about when on July 1st, 2003, the FCC began tallying each computer-generated complaint sent by any advocacy group as an individual complaint, rather than as one complaint as had been done previously. Remember the "wave of indecency complaints" we were all hearing about? Remember the thoughts that this is a new "post 9-11 mindset" that is sweeping America? It was all bullshit.
In fact, upwards of 99% of indecency complaints received by the FCC have come from campaigns generated by a single advocacy group, the Parents Television Council.
What about this year? Didn't complaints drop drastically this year? YES! In fact they did... sort of. And herein lies the further inherent inaccuracies in the FCC reporting system (and in turn the increase in power the PTC now has). Let's look at the numbers.
Number of complaints filed:
July 2005: 23,547
August 2005: 1,716
September 2005: 922
WTF happened in July? Supposedly the Parents Television Council (whose members have the convenience of complaining using an online e-mail form on PTC's Web site) filed two complaints in July against ABC for a Live 8 show where the F-bomb was dropped during a performance. The second round of complaints came from the PTC against Fox for the thriller, The Inside, which they said had themes of forced sodomy and S&M fetishes.
Let's look at the quarterly numbers if big digits rub you the right way.
Q1 of 2005: 157,016
Q2 of 2005: 6,161
(for comparison, in Q2 of the year before, the number was a whopping 272,818 complaints)
Where's OUR rights? The rights of the MAJORITY, not the vocal minority, to watch and listen to what we want to? Whether the PTC knows it or not, they've effectively driven the masses away from the TV and Radio they're trying to so preciously preserve, and right into the hands of satellite radio, podcasting, internet radio and other forms of media.
If you want to learn more, or just get angry, go ahead and read the Progress and Freedom Foundation's whitepaper just released (PDF).
[via Broadcasting and Cable]
