From the "Give Me A Break File" OR Was this worth $550,000

IMHO- The FCC needs to grow up and get a grip on what's out there and on TV and in Film. Your comments please...



From TV Week:

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing fining 20 ABC owned-and-operated stations $27,500 each—a total of $550,000—or airing the Feb. 25, 2003, episode of “NYPD Blue” in which a woman’s nude buttocks was seen, finding the pictures were “titillating and shocking” and the program violated FCC indecency rules.

The fine is the biggest the FCC has imposed on stations since the Janet Jackson Super Bowl half-time incident in 2004. That fine is being challenged by CBS in federal appeals court.

The FCC today cited only ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zone where the program aired before 10 p.m. FCC indecency rules don’t apply to programs airing after 10 p.m. “NYPD Blue” aimed at 10 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones.

The FCC cited a series of pictures during the program’s opening scenes involving the live-in lover of Detective Andy Sipowicz, the character played by Dennis Franz. The lover, another detective played by Charlotte Ross, drops her robe in the bathroom, revealing some parts of her breasts and her backside. Sipowicz's young son enters the bathroom and stares at her; she turns toward the camera and covers herself with her hands.

The scene prompted complaints from some groups, among them the American Family Association, and it generated thousands of FCC complaints, though ABC said it got very few.

In its ruling today, the FCC specifically pointed to the woman's nude buttocks and the way her body was displayed as the reason for the fine.

“The scene contains explicit and graphic depictions of sexual organs. The scene depicts multiple, close-range views of an adult woman’s naked buttocks. We find that the broadcast dwells on and repeats the sexual material. We have held that repetition and persistent focus on sexual or excretory material is a relevant factor in evaluating the potential offensiveness of broadcasts. Here, the scene revolves around the woman’s nudity and includes several shots of her naked buttocks. The material is thus dwelled upon and repeated.”

The FCC rejected ABC’s contention that the scene was “not presented in a lewd, prurient, pandering or titillating way” but was intended “to illustrate the complexity and awkwardness involved when a single parent brings a new romantic partner into her or his life.”

ABC said tonight it would oppose the fine.

“‘NYPD Blue,’ which aired on ABC from 1993 to 2005, was an Emmy Award-winning drama, broadcast with appropriate parental warnings as well as V-chip enabled program ratings from the time such ratings were implemented,” the network said in a statement.

“When the brief scene in question was telecast almost five years ago, this critically acclaimed drama had been on the air for a decade and the realistic nature of its storylines was well known to the viewing public. ABC feels strongly that the FCC’s finding is inconsistent with prior precedent from the commission, the indecency statute, and the First Amendment, and we intend to oppose the proposed fine.”