blogs.kxly.com

Four and a half years after Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson teamed up for their memorable Superbowl wardrobe malfunction, CBS has finally been let off the financial hook.

In case you forgot (and how could you?) here’s the infamous performance.

Today, a federal appeals court rejected a $550,000 indecency fine that the Federal Communications Commission levied against the network.  You can read all about the decision here. 

Now, a half a million dollars is a drop in the bucket to a television network. But that fine scared the heck out of anyone working at the local level. Because in the wake of Superbowl “outcry” (real or imagined), a new law was passed that increased the fines tenfold for any broadcaster caught violating the FCC obscenity guidelines. Worst case scenario for us, some bystander uses profane language during a newscast live shot, and KXLY gets a $325,000 fine for each utterance. Three expletives, and we could be looking at nearly a million bucks. A network can afford a fine like that. We can’t, and neither can most local affiliates. That’s why many local stations invested in equipment allowing us to operate on a “delay” (in our case, seven seconds) so that we had time to - frantically - delete any profane language or images that might unexpectedly pop up during live TV. The equipment wasn’t cheap, but considering what’s at stake, it’s a wise investment.

Don’t get me wrong.  As broadcasters, we have an obligation to take reasonable steps to keep profane material off the airwaves. But I think a $325,000 fine for one curse word or naughty image is…what’s that word? Obscene. Thank goodness that cooler heads at the 3rd U.S Circuit Court of Appeals feel the same way.

Bummer. I was working on the website from home tonight - one of the perils of working on the website is you can work from anywhere you have a connection to the Internet - when my wife Kerry tells me that a handful of websites are starting to report that counter-culture funnyman George Carlin died this afternoon.

Bummer.

Actually … that isn’t the word I used when she told me. Actually I used one of those seven “Filthy Words” that you can’t say on television. I used it several times without realizing it. If you followed George you know the routine I’m referring to and the subsequent court battles that went all the way to the Supreme Court (See FCC v. Pacifica Foundation).

George Carlin was a genius, in my book he was up there with the Monty Python troupe, John Belushi, Richard Pryor, Denis Leary … heck many stand-up comedians today owe their livelihoods, their routines, to George Carlin.

I’m sure when his death is announced on newscasts Monday with a wistful smile news anchors across the land will allude to his words - not words of the English language but his words - and comedians who have followed in his footsteps like Denis Leary or Chris Rock will pay homage on various talk shows to the man that followed on the heels of the late great Lenny Bruce and pushed the boundaries of comedy to the limits, the man who said out loud what many of us are thinking, and the man who as Cardinal Glick brought us Buddy Christ.

Of course since this is a blog attached to a website owned by a television station you won’t see those words here either.

George Carlin died of heart failure in Santa Monica. He was 71.

Bummer.