CBS has had its hat handed to it in recent days. Aside from the Dan Rather/George W. Bush document fiasco, the Federal Communications Commission has fined the network a whopping $550 000 for the Janet Jackson breast flash during the SuperBowl. It’s the largest fine the FEC has ever levied.
No comment was forthcoming from the FEC, but the obvious one comes to mind: American television censors are archaic, prudish, outdated, contradictory, and utterly ridiculous.
U.S. federal law bars radio and non-cable television stations from airing references to sexual and excretory functions between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children may be tuning in. That’s quite the large gap, and it does leave a significant omission in the protection of children against television trauma: violence.
No swearing, no frank talk about sex and bodily functions…but when it comes to guns, blood, death and other assorted forms of violence, it’s open season. The American passion for entertainment-via-mass destruction must be satiated, but god help those who might see a nipple ring!
The Canadian and British systems are much more realistic. Most adult television is given an adult time slot, yet there is a realization that adults don’t necessarily have to wait until midnight to watch adult-themed television. Swearing, sex, nudity…after 9pm, it’s very much open season on Canadian and British television networks, but virtually none of the content shocks for the sake of simple noteriety. It’s proper adult television…good drama, fantastic comedy, using the language and themes that adults discuss and disseminate in their everyday lives. And there’s a much more realistic use of violence in these programs…if there is any at all.
It’s a great pity that the quality adult U.S. television shows are relegated to pay-cable channels: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Sex and the City. Most of these programs air (unedited!) on network television or non-pay cable TV in Canada, usually in a late evening time slot judged appropriate for their content. It’s a reasoned, practical system…in other words, far removed from the McCarthyist morons who run the FEC.
Strangely enough, we’re more concerned about editing and time-delaying Don Cherry’s Hockey Night in Canada commentaries so that he doesn’t offend too many viewers. There’s something twisted — yet frighteningly Canadian — about our own flipside to U.S. censor obsessions.
But that’s a rant for another time…
