Go read this Jeff Jarvis post about Michael Powell’s idiotic NY Times Op-ed.
Can’t we just get rid of the FCC?
BTW- I was channel surfing today, and stopped briefly on some soap. Why did I stop? Because there was an exceptionally hot half naked chik dry humping some half dressed guy on the bed. It caught my eye and my finely honed (horned?) interest. And I am supposed to be outraged by Terrell Owens and some bimbo?
paul a'barge
Like you, I was surfing the media this morning. I happened on the Howard Stern show, on the FM Talk radio station in Austin, TX (“the Coyote”).
I have to tell you that every time I ingest anything more than 5 minutes of Stern, Michael Powell rises up my “hero-meter” every time.
Look, if you want your debauchery, then kindly go subscribe to it. This crap is coming off the public airwaves, and you’re just going to have to Moveon.Org and get over it.
John cole
Change the damn channel, you crusty ole grump.
Uncle Mikey
Why do you need ABC, NBC and CBS to be your porn/violence pimp? There are plenty of sources for prurient interests. Why does it have to be everywhere?
I liked the TO/Nicollette Sheridan bit, but I don’t give a crap if that’s the last time Monday Night Football has an interesting intro. Stern is occasionally interesting, but he’s not providing anything I find particularly worthwhile, and he’s going to be even more repellent on satellite radio. Isn’t that a victory for free speech?
TM Lutas
Yes, it would have been a victory for free speech but that’s like saying it would have been a military victory for the US v Luxembourg. The whole problem is that the federal government mandates that private broadcasters using certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum use truly old encoding schemes that do not provide the market with features that many parents want. That’s classic government intervention causing a problem and then putting more intervention on top to fix the first problem.
The cure is for the free speech advocates to address the underlying government intervention that primes the public to demand censorship. Change the engineering (and there’s a pretty easy technical fix coming up in 2010) and you remove the need for censorship because the public airwaves can have the trash broadcasting on them kept out by those with more refined tastes.
You multicast instead of broadcast and appropriately encrypt to keep the kiddies out. That’s all that need happen and the FCC (which will still exist, but will be like a county clerk’s office in function) will get out of the censorship business.
mihu
Look, if you need to see boobs during a football game, don’t bitch at the government. Take it up with the NFL. Have them free up more broadcast rights. So, if you want a boobie version of the Dolphins vs. Raiders game, you watch it on the pay per view boobie channel.
narciso
If you want to repeal the 1934 Federal Communication Act, the
abomination to the First Amend
ment and the godfather to McCain
/Feingold and other such atrocities; go right ahead, if
not don’t complain, when there’s
bigger fish to fry
Alexander the Grate
What I love about the Powell FCC is how it’s perfectly emblematic of the tension inherent in the current Republican coalition of libertarians and social conservatives, which it seems to me can only be held together by jingoism. Luckily for you guys it looks like there is no end to our enemies, foreign and domestic.
Ken
“If you want to repeal the 1934 Federal Communication Act, the
abomination to the First Amendment and the godfather to McCain
/Feingold and other such atrocities; go right ahead”
That’s exactly the right solution, to my mind.
slickvguy
Yep, I agree with some of the others. Don’t know why you have such a bug up your ass on this issue, John. We’ve discussed this before – quite some time ago.
It is YOU who should change the channel.
Unless your position is that ANYTHING under the sun should be allowed to be on the public airwaves, then you are in favour of a limit. Once you are in favour of a limit, the questions become: who sets the rules, how are they chosen, etc. We can debate those issues.
But this attitude of yours “to hell with everyone else, that stuff doens’t bother ME!” is selfish and shortsighted. If you were raising children, you would undersatnd that. (Insert your standard putdown of bad parenting here). Parents cannot, nor should they have to, be in a position to watch over their children every second of the day to make sure that what they are watching is appropriate. During certain hours, when kids are watching TV, a responsible society that is mindful of what their children are exposed to, should limit content and protect the young, impressionable children.
My main beef is that they censor the sex, but not the violence. And they do such a poor job of it.
Youa re not living in society by yourself John.
And you might want to take a closer look at where your in appropriate hostility and anger are coming from.
Fire away…
shark
I agree, the FCC should be banished.
That way, NBC can run hard core pornos in primetime without fear of censorship