<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 6.5.7638.1">
<TITLE>Read My Lips</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<!-- Converted from text/rtf format -->
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Originally published in<I> Current</I>, June 26, 2006<BR>
<B>By Jeremy Egner</B></FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">FCC penalties for broadcasting pixilated images of porn stars and strippers demonstrated that simply turning naughty bits into blurry bits doesn’t prevent indecency fines.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">PBS, uncertain as anyone over the FCC’s decrees and still stinging from the recent fine of a public TV station, is taking cover under a new layer of digital obfuscation.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Producers who want their work aired in the family-friendly 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. zone now must go beyond audio bleeps to pixilate any on-screen mouths that visibly form curse words. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The move, outlined in a May 31 memo to stations, came in the wake of this spring’s $4 million passel of FCC indecency fines</FONT> <FONT FACE="Tahoma">—</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> one of the smallest being a $15,000 decree against pubcaster KCSM in San Mateo, Calif. Congress was meanwhile increasing tenfold the maximum fine for such offenses. President Bush signed the bill raising the top fine to $325,000 per incident on June 15.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“We’re trying to react appropriately to the FCC’s recent decisions,” says Lea Sloan, PBS’s v.p. of communications. The KCSM fine, levied for an episode of</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The Blues</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> that contained music-industry people using several variations on “fuck” and “shit,” demonstrated “that just because something was a documentary, that doesn’t provide sufficient context to make the language acceptable to the FCC,” Sloan says.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Though the commission so far hasn’t fined broadcasters for profane words that can be seen but not heard, PBS’s new standards, which also call for a full bleep on compound expletives such as “motherfucker,” are the network’s attempt to stay one step ahead of the game.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Few observers expect the FCC would levy a maximum $325,000 fine on a pubcast er. But even fewer think public TV should take high-stakes gambles where inconsistent precedents are difficult to read.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">FCC commissioners “don’t even know what they’re doing, so how are we supposed to know? That’s the question of the day,” attorney Margaret Tobey told a group of programmers at last month’s Public Television Programmers Association meeting in Orlando. Tobey’s D.C.-based firm, Morrison & Foerster, is handling KCSM’s appeal pro bono.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">PBS’s policy is still to put programs with potentially indecent content on the network’s main feed if the producer offers stations the routine indemnification, PBS General Counsel Katherine Lauderdale told the PTPA crowd. Stations can choose alternative versions on separate soft feeds. Lauderdale also distributed a series of questions to help programmers assess broadcast indecency.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">As for reruns of programs distributed before PBS required pixilation, the original indemnifications still hold unless stations hear otherwise, Eric Brass, corporate counsel for Boston’s WGBH, tells</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Current.</FONT></I> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The new guidelines therefore don’t require producers to modify old productions, but WGBH is still figuring out how it will handle rebroadcasts of edgy older programs, Brass says. Producers have already made some small tweaks. In response to the new guidelines,</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Frontline</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> blurred the mouth of a soldier in a June 13 rerun of “The Insurgency” (photo above).</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The edit was subtle, but more prominent pixilation in the future could introduce an element of ridiculousness into serious works. More likely, it could cause filmmakers to cut edgy but important scenes to avoid unintended humor, says Louis Wiley, the series’ executive editor. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“We’re losing some of our ability to create powerful material that is truthful and accurate,” Wiley says. “We’re in the education business, not the shocking business, but sometimes to educate people they have to see and hear things as they really are, in a limited way.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Wiley, who said he was speaking for himself, not WGBH, blames the FCC rather than PBS for the policy.</FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">However, a review of recent FCC actions didn’t turn up any examples of fines that sprang from the complaints of readily offended lip readers. Even a rep from the Parents Television Council, which has pushed for stiff indecency penalties and offers forms to help people file complaints, isn’t sure the group would encourage people to complain about merely mouthed words that had already been bleeped.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“It really depends on situation, but my gut reaction would be that we probably wouldn’t” advise people to file such complaints, says Melissa Caldwell, senior programs director for the PTC.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Larry Miller, a communications attorney that represents a number of public TV stations, can’t recall an example of an unpixilated cursing mouth causing a fine.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">But he and others think the move is not unreasonable in the current regulatory environment. </FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“PBS does not want to be involved in a case that sets some precedent for unpixilated, non-audible expletives,” Brass says.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Says Miller: “It’s hard to know what the commission wants anymore on pixilation.”</FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The FCC recently levied fines for broadcasting blurred nudity on the WB network’s Surreal Life 2 and also cited CBS’s</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Without a Trace</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> and Telemundo’s</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Con El Corazón</FONT></I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">En La Mano for graphic scenes with no nudity because the sexual context was unmistakable. In 1999, it fined Back Bay Broadcasting, a Rhode Island radio station owner, for airing bleeped curse words that were “recognizable, notwithstanding the editing.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">And, of course, it fined KCSM for profanity-laced bluesspeak, even though the trash talk was clearly outside of sexual or excretory context. The commissioners have decreed that the f- and s-words “invariably invoke coarse sexual and excretory images.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“I haven’t had one call [about the new PBS guidelines] from clients saying, ‘This is outrageous!’” Miller says. “Everybody is pretty cautious right now and waiting to see what happens with the Blues case.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“Even those of us who are strong First Amendment advocates are concerned about where the regulation is going,” he adds. “Nobody wants to be the next test case.”<BR>
In with the “worst of the worst”</FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">KCSM wasn’t looking to be a test case either, but the little college-owned station found itself cast in that role in March when the commission fined it along with an array of commercial stations. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The commission ruled in last year’s seemingly significant</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Saving Private Ryan</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> case that expletives were acceptable in the ABC broadcast because removing them would have diminished the realism of the fictional war story. But in KCSM’s case, the FCC found a documentary of actual reality was in violation, along with pixilated porn stars on</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The Surreal Life 2</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">, teen orgies on</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Without a Trace</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> and Puerto Rican rap videos that extolled the virtues of anal sex.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Public TV has been “lumped together with the worst of the worst,” Wiley says. “If curse words are okay in a movie, they sure as hell should be okay in a documentary.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">In Morrison & Foerster’s 170-page appeal for KCSM, filed last month, the attorneys noted that the FCC’s authority to regulate indecent speech “is constitutionally permissible only if exercised with caution and restraint.” In recent decisions, however, the commission “appears to have abandoned that caution and restraint and has instead created a vague and overbroad indecency enforcement scheme that impermissibly burdens protected speech,” the attorneys wrote. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The firm does not know when the FCC will respond to the appeal, a spokeswoman said. </FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">In the meantime, pubTV leaders, fearing talented filmmakers will jump to cable channels not bound by the indecency standards, hope to convince the commission to give documentaries more thoughtful consideration than the average envelope-pushing reality TV show, Sloan says. “The documentary genre needs to be scrutinized with a finer point on the pencil.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">But until it is, Lauderdale told programmers at last month’s conference, PBS will try “to remain true to the program but also protect the stations’ licenses.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">“It’s a balancing act,” she said, “and it’s harder than you think.”</FONT>
</P>
<BR>
<P><B><FONT FACE="Arial">Thanks,</FONT></B>
</P>
<P><B><FONT FACE="Arial">Rychard E. Withers, Engineer<BR>
</FONT></B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">CBS RADIO - Fresno, CA<BR>
KMJ-AM/KSKS-FM/KFPT-AM/KOQO-FM/KMGV-FM/KWYE-FM/KFJK-FM</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">1071 W Shaw Ave.<BR>
(559)490-5828 Cell: (559)287-9096<BR>
Confidential Information: This Email information is intended only for the individual named on this transmission, not intended to be forwarded to third parties. You are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, without the express consent of the sender is unauthorized. If you received this email in error, please delete the message accordingly. <BR>
<BR>
LEGAL NOTICE: This email may be considered an advertising or promotional message.<BR>
<BR>
If you no longer wish to receive commercial email from this Station’s Engineering Department, please reply to this email by using your e-mail’s "reply" button or by sending an email to rewithers@cbs.com . Insert this message into the reply email: "Please remove me from the Infinity Broadcasting Fresno Engineering Department's commercial email list."<BR>
<BR>
You must use this method to notify us of your opt-out request, as we cannot guarantee that other methods of notification will be effective. Please be aware that we may continue to contact you via email for administrative or informational purposes, including follow-up messages regarding contests you have entered or other transactions you have undertaken. By law, such messages are not considered to be commercial email. <BR>
</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=2 COLOR="#000000"> <<Withers, Rychard E.vcf>> </FONT>
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>