Client Alert
FCC Issues Fines for 2003 Married By America Broadcast
February 26, 2008
Abstract
The Federal Communications Commission has issued $7,000 fines against thirteen Fox affiliates who had aired a Married by America program in April 2003. The Commission originally had proposed fining all 169 Fox affiliates that had carried the show, but it is proceeding only against the few stations against which complaints had been filed. As with its NYPD Blue decision last week, the Commission’s rationale for issuing its fines provides a certain degree of guidance to broadcasters – at least for the time being, as judicial challenges of these decisions may significantly rewrite the underlying policies.
The broadcast occurred on April 7, 2003. The Commission sent letters of inquiry that July and a notice of apparent liability in October 2004, in which it found the material at issue to have been indecent. The Commission's Forfeiture Order describes the ostensibly offensive material in great detail. Despite the affected stations' objections, the Commission found the program’s depiction of lewd activities at bachelor and bachelorette parties to have violated all the elements of its broadcast indecency standards. The Commission's analysis suggests a number of areas in which it extended or refined its prior analyses.
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