Obscenity

High above Wilshire Boulevard, scenes from the pilot of "Dexter" were illuminating a tiny editing room. From a couch, Bob Greenblatt, Showtime's president of entertainment, considered the original version of the bloody series about a well-meaning serial killer -- and compared it to the revised version he'd made for CBS. CBS will begin airing the 12 episodes of Season 1, or at least parts of them, tonight in another sign of how the networks are tiptoeing into edgier fare.

The Supreme Court this week may reopen for the first time in more than 30 years the debate over what qualifies as an "indecent" broadcast. The media environment has changed dramatically since 1978, when the court last ruled on this issue: Today's viewers and listeners are exposed to the more freewheeling cable TV, Internet and "shock jocks" on satellite radio.

Federal prosecutors filed suit against News Corp.'s Fox Television in four jurisdictions to force payment of fines for a 2003 broadcast that featured strippers at bachelor and bachelorette parties. The actions in Tennessee, West Virginia, Iowa and the District of Columbia came after the Federal Communications Commission rejected Fox's appeal of proposed indecency fines for the show "Married by America," saying the company violated a 25-page length limit for pleas.

As federal judges consider pivotal cases about what constitutes offensive TV and radio broadcasts, an expletive might best describe the state of the federal government's enforcement of indecency rules. It's all bleeped-up. Thousands of viewer and listener complaints about programs are backed up at the Federal Communications Commission, where officials acknowledge the legal limbo has tied their hands. The FCC is reluctant to rule on these cases until the U.S.

An attempt at humor -- something that Coach Pete Carroll said "we were just having fun with" -- backfired on the USC program this week, prompting the school to pull a video off youtube.com. The footage was of Carroll's son, Brennan, the Trojans' tight ends coach, putting a group of potential walk-ons through a series of drills during a tryout. Throughout, Brennan Carroll is shown hamming it up for the camera -- and using language laced with profanities.

Apparently, the Maricopa County Police Department can do without Shaq. Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants Shaquille O'Neal to return his special deputy sheriff's badges to the Arizona county because of profanity and a racially derogatory word the Phoenix Suns center used while mocking Kobe Bryant in a freestyle rap video that surfaced Monday on the Internet. "I do believe in free speech, but I don't believe that in law enforcement to use this type of language is proper," Arpaio said.

A federal appeals court agreed Tuesday with a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the Child Online Protection Act, which now could head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

DC Comics is trying to pull back or destroy tens of thousands of copies of a new Batman comic book after a printing error put a barrage of especially obscene words on the pages. The issue, "All-Star Batman & Robin" No. 10, was drawn by fan-favorite Jim Lee and written by none other than Frank Miller, the creator of "300" and "Sin City" who will be making his solo Hollywood directorial debut with a masked-man movie called "The Spirit" that opens on Christmas Day.

The Federal Communications Commission has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the indecency case over Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction" incident at the 2004 Super Bowl. The FCC this week appealed a ruling by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, saying that court was wrong to throw out the case and a $550,000 fine against CBS Corp. in July. The appellate court cited the FCC practice of not considering objectionable images indecent if they are "fleeting."

YouTube is being blocked by Brazil's second-largest fixed-line telephone operator in response to a judicial order banning a steamy video of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli, the telephone company said Monday. Brasil Telecom said it blocked access to YouTube across a wide swath of Latin America's most populous country late Friday after receiving the order. The widely viewed video shows Cicarelli and Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni in intimate scenes along a beach near the Spanish city of Cadiz.