Stevens Plans Indecency Bill Raising Fines on Broadcasters
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to take up the House indecency bill (HR-310) that increases fines for broadcasters sometime in the spring, staff dir. Lisa Sutherland told an NAB legislative conference Tues. The measure could include a provision that Sen. Burns (R-Mont.) proposed as an amendment in the 2004 Defense Dept. Appropriations bill that would take into account the size of broadcasters when levying fines. The House bill, passed last year in the aftermath of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl flap (CD Feb 17 p1), would raise maximum fines on broadcasters to $500,000 from $32,500.
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“We're planning to do something,” Sutherland said, but the details aren’t worked out. Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) told us that “there are still internal discussions” ongoing about the bill and “no consensus” on its final contents. But it’s a priority for the committee, he added. Asked whether the committee is still considering one major telecom bill or would split topics into separate measures, he said a decisions isn’t set*. But indecency might qualify for separate treatment: “We have to decide where we're going with that.” House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.) told us he would be happy to work with Stevens on an indecency bill but hadn’t talked with him in 2 months and wasn’t aware of plans to match the House measure.
There’s also a “general consensus” among members that Congress should reinstate the video broadcast flag in telecom legislation, Sutherland said. Sen. Smith (R-Ore.) is taking the lead on this, she said. Stevens said at a hearing in January that Smith’s bill would be the backbone of legislation that he hoped to mark up mid-March. But he acknowledged then and Sutherland reiterated Tues. that the audio flag issue is more complex. She said she hoped rules could be worked out preserving the right of consumers to use their iPods and suggested the NAB’s president work with the MPAA on solutions to the problem. Sen. Sununu (R-N.H.) said at the hearing that the flag issue was a complex technology that could have unintended consequences.
Indecency issues are the “number one subject that people talk to me about in grocery stores” and through e-mails and letters to the Commission, FCC Comr. Tate told broadcasters. Tate said she reviews “pages and pages of complaints” every day that aren’t from a single source or an e-mail campaign, contrary to the suggestion of the broadcaster who raised the question. “I wish we could change the dialog from indecency to decency and be more on the positive side of the dialog,” Tate said. She said the FCC is an administrative agency and its job is to review complaints and take action when appropriate, but she didn’t elaborate. Tate also urged broadcasters to put in a plug for approval of the 5th commissioner to speed work at the FCC.
Rep. Boucher (D-Va.) called indecency evaluations “an inexact science at best” at the NAB confab, but admitted he was “deeply in the minority” in his opposition as a “First Amendment purist” to indecency rules. It’s likely those rules will be applied to open-access programming but not subscription programming in the end, he said. Preceding Boucher, IP Subcommittee Chmn. Smith (R-Tex.) highlighted passage of his Family Movie Act, which protects the right to use technology that deletes objectionable portions of purchased content such as DVDs. That measure solved a problem “without telling broadcasters what they should broadcast.”