Parents Television Council blasts FCC, wants CBS held accountable

In November 2004, the FCC negotiated what is known as a "Consent Decree" with CBS after the network broadcast indecent material. The agreement essentially dismissed thousands of public complaints about the network, and called for CBS to take steps to ensure that indecent material was not broadcast again. However, the FCC issued a "Notice of Apparent Liability" against a Utah-based CBS station in March 2006 when the network rebroadcast a teen orgy scene on the program Without a Trace.

Now a new consent decree has been negotiated. Under that new agreement (FCC File No. EB-07-IH-9319), on November 23 (the day after Thanksgiving), CBS agreed to "make a voluntary contribution to the United States Treasury in the amount of $300,000." It also extends application of a "company-wide compliance plan" -- agreed to and adopted by the network following the 2004 decree -- for another three years.

But Dan Isett of the Parents Television Council (PTC) doubts the new agreement will have a major impact.

"Why should the American people, the owners of the broadcast airwaves, have any more confidence in this consent decree being signed by the FCC and it being enforced, than they did in the last one that the FCC signed with CBS?" he asks. "Clearly CBS is not acting in the public interest. They only get to use broadcast airwaves as a matter of public convenience, as a temporary licensee of the public airwaves."

Isett says the FCC has placed the corporate interest of CBS over the public interest. He feels the matter should have been handled differently.

"What we really needed here was for the FCC to be very public in holding CBS accountable for what it's done -- or more accurately, not done in this case," he states. "And instead we get a backdoor deal cut and released the Friday after Thanksgiving." Isett calls the entire incident "deeply disappointing" for the FCC and for the agency's chairman, Kevin Martin, in particular.

In a press release responding to the latest Consent Decree, PTC president Tim Winter takes issue with both CBS and the FCC, urging the agency to call the network to account for "wantonly and repeatedly violating contemporary community standards for decency" and for "openly and defiantly breach[ing] both the spirit and the letter" of the earlier decree.

"We ... call on the FCC to review each and every broadcast license held by CBS, beginning with its owned-and-operated television station in Salt Lake City, KUTV," says Winter. "Either a broadcast license means something or it means nothing. We believe that a license means something, and as prescribed by Congress, we believe a licensee must serve the public interest."

In return for the 2004 dismissal of public complaints and termination of "several pending indecency investigations," Viacom (owner of CBS Broadcasting at the time) made a "voluntary contribution" of $3.5 million to the U.S. Treasury and was obligated to adopt and maintain for three years a company-wide compliance plan to prevent the broadcast of material in violation of the indecency laws.