Tuesday October 04, 2005

Summer Break at the PTC?

Everyone who’s anyone will be weighing in on their opinion about patronage appointment Harriet Miers today—so, naturally, I’ve decided to focus on my favorite patronage appointment instead.

Last time we checked in with FCC chairman Kevin Martin, he didn’t have a Republican majority—Bush needs to make a few appointments once he gets done stacking the Supreme Court—and the backlog of unrenewed licenses was growing. Now Mediaweek reports that the Martin-led commission has agreed to renew licenses that have complaints pending against them if licensees agree to extend their liability for such complaints to three years. Normally, license renewals erase all pending complaints older than a year. This would give Martin “continued leverage over network programming while still allowing station sales that would be precluded by a stalled license renewal.” But Mediaweek buries the lede—just as I’m doing now.

Not only has Martin spent six months in office without sanctioning a single station for indecency, indecency complaints are actually down! To wit: “The number of indecency complaints against radio and TV programming has dropped, from nearly 158,000 in the first quarter to 6,161 complaints in the second quarter. The first-quarter number already was lower than the corresponding period a year earlier, a trend the FCC ascribed to a drop in organized e-mail campaigns. Such campaigns are a hallmark of Parents Television Council and other groups.”

What’s up with that? A look at the PTC’s website shows that the group has not called for a mass petitioning of the FCC since June 15, but instead has focused on contacting sponsors. Either the PTC realizes that the FCC’s current gridlock renders the commission ineffective for its purposes, or it believes Martin can be trusted to start throwing fines around as soon as he has a majority. Stay tuned.

Posted by jim at 02:29 PM ||