Facing the prospect of multimillion-dollar fines if an expletive slipped passed their censors, the major TV broadcast networks banded together to challenge the FCC. A panel of judges on the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with them last year, throwing out the FCC's tougher fleeting expletives policy, calling it "arbitrary and capricious."
Since then, the FCC's indecency enforcement has nearly ground to a halt. Complaints continue to roll in -- more than 153,000 in the first half of 2007, the latest FCC figures available, although many of those are duplicates lodged against the same program. And the commission's staff of 23 people dedicated to indecency continues to investigate complaints, asking broadcasters for video and transcripts of shows.
But in 2007, more than 80% of the FCC's 3,226 indecency investigations were pending more than nine months, the time frame in which the agency tries to either dismiss or resolve complaints, according to its annual performance report. The report noted that some of those investigations were "the subject of pending litigation."
"There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of unadjudicated indecency complaints sitting at the FCC," said Dan Issett, director of corporate and government affairs for the Parents Television Council, whose members filed many of those complaints after receiving alerts from the watchdog group encouraging them to object to offensive programs. Although the Supreme Court case has tied the commission's hands on fleeting expletives, he said the FCC should be acting on other types of complaints, such as scripted language and nudity.
But commissioners have acted only when facing a statute of limitations deadline.
"We hoped to get clarification on some of these rulings before we moved ahead with any more indecency cases," said an FCC official, who did not want to be identified talking about pending matters. "However, once it became clear that we would not get such clarification very quickly and that we saw we were facing a statute of limitations issue in some cases, the commission acted so as not to lose the cause of action."
In other cases, the FCC has been asking broadcasters to waive the deadline until the courts act. Fox turned down such a request for the "Pursuit of D.B. Cooper," spokesman Scott Grogin said.
Broadcasters say privately that the FCC can make their lives difficult if they don't agree to waive the statutory deadlines by delaying station license renewals that can complicate attempts to sell them. But with the cases pending, executives did not want to comment publicly. The FCC official said requests to waive statutes of limitation were standard.
But after years of being on the defensive, broadcasters aren't willing to go along so easily, said John Crigler, a longtime communications attorney.
"For the first time they've got some hope there is going to be some relief in the courts," he said. "Broadcasters who are issued fines are much more likely than they were before . . . to appeal rather than just roll over and pay the fine."
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jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
