Mass Media Law CH 16

indecent

FCC considers whether something is ____________

forfeiture

Know an FCC fine is called a _________________.

V-chip; 13 V-chip

________ has been installed on all TV sets with screen of ____ inches or larger sold in the U.S. since 2000. The ________ works in conjunction with the TV Parental Guidelines that include both age- and content-based ratings for television programs.

Licensing

_____________ broadcasters is one of the most important functions of the FCC.

broadcaster

2013 Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl and Joe Flacco said "this is f-cking awesome"; west coast could bleep it out but east coast could not; FCC said you can't do this; CBS got in trouble -In cases like this, FCC will give blame to ________________________ (FCC says broadcaster ship;d have a time delay to be able to bleep stuff out; even if live show)

*spectrum scarcity*

Although debate over First Amendment protection of broadcasting was never truly joined, a philosophy that justified a substantial regulation of broadcasting nevertheless existed, anchored by 2 seemingly immutable propositions. -First, *the broadcast spectrum is a limited transmission pathway.* -*Not all who want to transmit radio signals can do so.* -The notion that there are a finite number of frequencies on which to broadcast and, in turn, that there are more people who want to broadcast than there are available frequencies is known as ____________________. -Second, while private individuals might own the transmitters, the towers, the microphones and all the other paraphernalia that allow radio signals to be transmitted, the American people own the transmission path, the radio spectrum, through which the signals travel to the listener's radio set. -As such, those who *use* the spectrum are bound to serve the needs of those who *own* the spectrum. -So somebody had to decide who, among all those who sought to broadcast, should have that privilege. -Rules were also needed to ensure that broadcasters met the needs of the spectrum owners. -That is when the government stepped in, deciding who could and who could not broadcast, and establishing rules to ensure that those who did broadcast met their responsibilities to the people. -The government called these responsibilities "meeting the public interest, convenience or necessity," or *PICON, an acronym that became the code word to justify all the rules relating to broadcasting*. -And within PICON's critical concept of "public interest," the FCC traditionally has identified 3 major policy objectives that allegedly lead to its promotion: -Competition -Diversity -Localism

8

Broadcasting licenses are granted to radio and television stations for ____ years.

would not have

Don Imus case again; under FCC indecency regulation this ___________________ been for a forfeiture (was an example of community censorship under FCC, it was not indecent though)

forfeiture

Failure to abide by programming rules can cost a broadcast license at renewal time. But this sanction is rarely imposed by the FCC. The agency has a wide range of other kinds of sanctions, however, which are frequently levied against those who transgress the regulations. FCC Remedies Against Broadcasters for Content Violations: 1. Issue a warning notice. 2. Impose a monetary fine (a "______________"; an increasingly common remedy.) 3. Place conditions on renewal of a broadcast license. 4. Revoke a broadcaster's license entirely (very rarely used.)

monopolies

Most of the rules for who can own a license and when they can broadcast and stuff is set up to prevent _______________________.

cannot

Technically, the FCC _______________ regulate content In actuality, FCC kind of does; it arguably has the most power to regulate content out of all the branches

community censorship

The Supreme Court in 1978 ruled it was not a violation of the First Amendment to bar indecency during certain times of the day from the airwaves. The FCC said it was impermissible to broadcast "language that describes in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities and organs, *at times when there is a reasonable risk children may be in the audience.* Later in 2001, FCC changed it a little but remains the standard: language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities and organs. *Before finding a broadcast indecent, the FCC must make 2 determinations:* -First, the material must fall within the subject matter scope of indecency; that is, it must depict or describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. -Second, it must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium. -The standards are not local and do not encompass any particular geography area. The standard id that of an average broadcast viewer or listener. Notice that speech must relate to sexual or excretory activities or organs in order for it to fall within the FCC's definition of indecency. Thus, when radio host Don Imus in 2007 referred to members of the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos," the language did not fall within the scope of indecency. -The language certainly was racist, offensive and disagreeable, but it did not depict sexual or excretory organs and activities. -The firing of Imus by CBS Radio thus was an act of ______________________________--in this case, corporate censorship--rather than government censorship.

*Radio Act of 1912* *Radio Act of 1927* who; when content *Federal Communications Act*

The regulation of telecommunications in the U.S. dates from 1910, shortly after radio was developed. Congress passed a law that required all U.S. passenger ships to have a radio. Two years later the federal legislature adopted the ________________________, which required that all radio transmitters be licensed by the federal government and that radio operators be licensed by the government as well. In the 1920s radio grew far faster than most observers had thought possible. There were millions of listeners and far too many stations. *The electromagnetic spectrum, or the airwaves, through which radio signals travel is a finite medium.* As a modern freeway can hold only so many vehicles, the airwaves can hold only so many radio signals. Too many cars on the highway cause accidents and gridlock. Too many radio signals meeting in the spectrum cause similar chaos. -signals overlap and block each other. To listeners the result is gibberish. Near the end of the 1920s a reluctant Congress was forced to act once again; it adopted the ________________________, a comprehensive set of rules aimed at creating order from the problem cause by too many people trying to broadcast radio signals at the same time. The new law governed _____ could and could not broadcast, and _______ they could broadcast. But it focused on the _____________ of radio programs as well. Both the licensing and the content regulations implicated the First Amendment. Radio broadcasting surely amounted to speech and press, rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. Surprisingly, the issues hardly arose. The 1927 statute was substantially amended and revised 7 years later when Congress adopted the _______________________________ in 1934. This law remains as the base for all telecommunications regulations today. It expanded the earlier statuette to include telephones and the telegraph as well as radio. And it provided for the appointment of the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, to regulate all these telecommunications media-the same FCC that years later was the bane of Eminem and Howard Stern's existence.

market wants; needs

The thrust of these rules was simple. It was thought that the broadcast industry could best serve the nation if as many different individuals as possible owned the limited number of broadcast stations and if those who were permitted to broadcast provided a broad range of material to entertain, educate and inform the listeners and viewers. The government, primarily the FCC, would ensure that these rules were followed. But the 2 propositions that provided the underpinning for this regulatory philosophy turned out to be less immutable than first imagined, and the rationale for regulation began to unravel. True, the broadcast spectrum is limited. But new media forms, like cable television and the Internet, promised new pathways with unlimited transmission space. *The notion that broadcasters must serve the public interest began to erode under pressure from the new economic liberalism that are in the last 25 years of the 20th century.* The idea of serving the interest of the ____________ as opposed to serving the needs of th public developed as a dominant theme in the industry. The large corporations that owned much of the telecommunications media argued that giving listeners and viewers what they wanted to hear and watch made more sense than giving them what the government thought they should hear and see. It was also more lucrative for station owners. So capitalism and market-driven theories were in; paternalism and PICON were put on the back burner. There became a heated battle over the meaning of the term "public interest" in the PICON acronym that still exists today. Is the public interest: -whatever the public _________ (whatever the public is interested in watching)? -whatever the public ___________ (even if it is not interested in watching it)?

10.5; 12 3

There are 2 key aspects to the FCC's regulation of children's television programming: 1. Limitations on commercials during programming targeting children 2. Requirements regarding educational programming that must be carried With regard to limits on commercials, the FCC mandates that in an hour-long program aired primarily for an audience of children 12 years old and younger, advertisements must not exceed ________ minutes on the weekends and _______ during the week. The commercial time limits, however, are not applicable to noncommercial educational stations that are prohibited from airing commercials. *The FCC also bars what it calls "program-length commercials" targeting children.* -What does this term mean? -When an advertisement for a product is aired in a program associated with that product, the entire program is counted as commercial time. -An example is a cartoon program that airs a commercial for the dolls of its characters during the program broadcast. Children's programs must also be separated by either buffers or substantial pauses from commercials to help minors distinguish between shows and ads. In terms of educational programming, the FCC today, under guidelines it adopted in 1996 to comply with the Children's Television Act of 1990, mandates that broadcasters carry a minimum of ______ hours per week (averaged over a 6-month period in order to provide broadcasters with scheduling flexibility) of "core educational programming." Such programming must be specifically designed to serve the educational and informational needs of children ages 16 years and under. It must be: -at least 30 minutes long -aired between 7:00 A.M. and 10:00 P.M. -a regularly scheduled weekly program not pre-empted more than 10% of the time

local

What causes a blackout - if it is not carried by a ________ broadcast TV station -if 72 hours before fame all tickets are not all sold out, a blackout could occur (motivation factor to get people to go to the game) -diffiduclt to know when a blackout will occur -started with just professional sports but now more -not so many blackouts anymore -2011- 3 buffalo bills games were blacked out -2012-people got pissed