The
Revolution Is Coming
Lets start out with
Mr. Bush’s decision to appoint
Colin Powel son to head of the FCC.
Michael K Powel, this fucking nitwit
actually has a photo page on his website...
http://www.fcc.gov/commissioners/powell/mkp_photo_gallery.html
He is a total puppet
for the Bush Administration.
I know a lot of you out there absolutely
hate Howard Stern. And love the fact
that the FCC is trying to push him
out of radio with their 500000 fine
for every single indecent thing they
view as indecent said on the radio.
What ever happen to our free speech?
Simply put if you do not like something
turn it off. It isn’t like when
you turn on Howard Stern you don’t
know what it is you are getting. And
what this man says nowadays is far
from obscene and lude. Hell NYPD blue
and most other radio shows are worse
then Howard’s is now.
Back to the point here. Clear Channel
and President Bush are hand in hand.
It is a fact that if you are on a
Clear Channel station and ever Bashed
Bush or the war you were removed.
This article makes some good points
to this subject...
http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article3.html
Here is another great feed on the
whole for the good of America crap
Bush and Powel are saying...
“The producers
of the ABC cop show "NYPD Blue"
take a rebel's pride in the firsts
they have scored: first network series
to routinely use profanity, first
to feature seminude love scenes and
first to show a middle-age man's ample
bare bottom.
Now "NYPD Blue" is scoring
a new kind of first. For the first
time in the show's 11 years, creator
Steven Bochco said, the network's
censors have breached an agreement
that allows him to air the racy material
that gives the TV drama its gritty
appeal. Bochco's troubles began soon
after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe
malfunction" during the Super
Bowl halftime show. Three times since
then, Bochco says, ABC has expunged
racy scenes from "NYPD Blue,"
including one that he describes as
"a relatively brief, very tasteful
sex scene." An ABC spokeswoman
confirmed the changes but said they
resulted from a "standard review"
by the network's censors. Bochco said
he refused to make the changes voluntarily.
"It doesn't mean that I can stop
them from doing it," he said.
"But it does signal my unwillingness
to be a co-conspirator. It's very
chilling. It's a little intimidating,
and it's frustrating."
It's also a sign of the times in the
not-quite-so-brave new world of broadcasting.
When the House of Representatives
last week passed a 18-fold increase
in the fines for indecency--to a maximum
$500,000 per incident--it marked the
first major push in 25 years to toughen
broadcast decency standards.
Bills in the House and Senate are
the leading edge of a political backlash
against what critics say has been
an increase in indecent material on
the nation's television and radio
airwaves.
Even before the Jackson incident,
the Federal Communications Commission
was preparing enforcement actions
in more than two dozen indecency cases,
which is nearly five times the average
pace of enforcement activity in each
of the last five years.
The fear of new fines, and the far
more serious threat that the government
might yank station-broadcasting licenses,
are prompting broadcasters to tighten
standards. Clear Channel Communications
Inc. has turned off the microphones
of radio "shock jocks" Howard
Stern and "Bubba the Love Sponge,"
while television executives are reviewing
their programs with a keen eye for
questionable content.
A new era of careful speaking, primmer
pictures and tougher government oversight
could have far-reaching effects. It
could change what kinds of programs
air on broadcast TV, and it could
bring unregulated cable and satellite
programming under government oversight
for the first time.
Democrats are using the public outrage
over Jackson's Super Bowl exhibition
as a chance to override, for a second
time, the FCC's vote last year to
allow greater concentration of media
ownership.
The FCC voted last June to cap the
reach of any single owner of broadcast
TV stations at 45 percent of the nation's
households, up from 35 percent. A
later compromise with Congress to
limit the increase to 39 percent remains
on hold pending a court challenge.
Meanwhile, on the radio dial, the
move toward new caution could push
some of the morning drive's most popular
personalities into a new form of distribution.
Stern and others are expected to entertain
lucrative new contracts from satellite
radio, which so far remains beyond
the reach of regulators.
That's a lot of change stemming from
less than two seconds of bared breast.
But in the blush of outrage after
the Super Bowl, few seem inclined
to stand in the way of that change.
Liberals and conservatives are cheering
the process, each for their own reasons.
Liberals laud the renewed zest for
oversight of a Bush administration
FCC that has pushed for media deregulation.
Conservatives favor the return to
decency standards, even if it comes
at the cost of more government intervention.
"I am loath to get the government
involved," said William Bennett,
the conservative leader and co-director
of the Empower America think tank.
"I think the reason the government
is involved is because people are
screaming for the government to do
something."
They're getting what they're screaming
for.
The $500,000 limit on fines, up from
the $27,500 maximum for broadcasters,
was only one provision of the bill
the House passed last week. The House
also voted, 391-22, to raise the fine
on performers who violate decency
standards to $500,000 from $11,000.
And perhaps most significant, the
bill includes a so-called "three
strikes and out" provision that
automatically starts license revocation
proceedings for any station fined
three times for violating decency
standards.
The Senate, meanwhile, is considering
proposals that reach even further.
Among them: new standards to protect
children from violent programming
and a moratorium for more study before
the FCC could implement its new media
concentration limits.
Businesses rarely welcome increased
regulation, even when it comes with
such widespread and bipartisan applause.
The broadcast industry is no exception.
Tie cable to regulations, too
Television broadcasters, in particular,
are formulating a plan to seek to
slow the legislation in the Senate
by offering amendments that might
make the measure more complicated
and difficult to pass.
The industry argues that cable television
should, for the first time, be brought
under regulatory scrutiny. This would
make the competitive dynamic more
fair, broadcasters say.
"Broadcast management is paralyzed
right now. Cable, being in a more
nimble environment, is more creative,"
said Kathryn Thomas, an expert on
programming trends at media-buying
giant Starcom in Chicago. Regulators
"can't speak out of both sides
of the mouth and, in the end, hope
they haven't done monumental damage
to the business."
Broadcasters also may push to entitle
cable customers to pick and choose
which stations they want. That move
would replace the package deals cable
companies now sell, forcing customers
to bring programming into their homes
that might offend them.
Another effort to broaden the legislation
in the Senate would seek to include
violence in broadcast decency standards.
But opponents say any such effort
would be misguided.
"That's the slippery slope of
over-regulation," warned Dan
Polsby, an expert on media law at
George Mason University Law School
who helped write the decency standards
the FCC has used for a quarter century.
"Violence doesn't offend people
in the same way at all. It tends to
be about the affirmation of conventional
morality: good against evil,"
Polsby said. "Sex tends to undermine
the conventional morality."
Whatever the details of any final
bill, approval would likely represent
the biggest change to broadcasting
decency standards since 1978. That's
when the U.S. Supreme Court established
the constitutionality of such standards
by upholding the FCC's ban on comedian
George Carlin's "seven dirty
words" monologue.
Carlin's comedic bit attacked the
FCC's limits on outrageous speech,
an argument that critics of the proposed
laws are echoing, with politer language,
today.
Those who dissent against the rush
toward increased regulation fear a
negative impact on free speech. In
the face of a get-tough FCC, big broadcasters
with billions of dollars at stake
might sacrifice free expression to
save their bottom lines, critics say.
"The notion of both a consolidated
media in the hands of just a few owners
and this federal government setting
standards for decency is a dangerous
combination," said U.S. Rep.
Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). "It's
a dangerous combination for free speech."
Increasingly radio, because of its
spontaneity, its propensity to push
the envelope and its many hours of
live programming, has drawn more criticism
and fines from the FCC than television.
Stern action toward Stern
Clear Channel is the nation's largest
radio owner with 1,200 stations in
50 states. Amid the fallout from the
Jackson incident, the firm fired Tampa-based
shock jock "Bubba the Love Sponge"
and paid, without protest, a $750,000
fine for his antics.
The San Antonio-based broadcasting
giant also suspended Stern from its
six stations that carried him and
introduced a "zero tolerance"
decency requirement for its on-air
personalities. Clear Channel also
spent $500,000 for the equipment needed
to impose a 20-second delay on all
of its live broadcasts.
The move on Stern came the day before
Clear Channel radio executive John
Hogan testified before Congress. But
the Stern antics that prompted his
removal were no more outrageous than
much of his sexually provocative banter
over the years.
The timing gave rise to charges that
the jock's suspension was motivated
by politics. And with quick resolution
of the "Love Sponge" case,
Clear Channel avoided having that
transgression count against any future
"three strikes" penalty,
said Merrill Lynch analyst Marc E.
Nabi.
Broadcasters who like to perform on
the edge of decency find the new standards
unnerving. Chicago-based shock jock
Erich "Mancow" Muller contends
that the $42,000 he was fined for
decency offenses since 1999 would
cost $62 million under the proposals
in Congress--the result of the higher
fines and the way they may be applied
on individual stations.
"Anyone with an opinion is in
danger if you're not with the current
political climate," Muller said.
"I'm trying to do my show and
figure out what the rules are. So
far, it's been, `If you can't say
it around a 7-year-old, then don't
say it.' Now I have to do a show for
a 7-year-old?"
He added: "One mistake and you're
finished? Zero tolerance? That's fascism."
FCC enforcement chief David Solomon
doubts the sincerity of complaints
about vagueness.
"It's an excuse by broadcasters
every time they get in trouble that
if only the FCC can make its rules
clearer," he said. "I think
it's pretty hard for anybody to argue
with a straight face they think all
this is fine."
Bennett, who next month will launch
his own conservative radio program,
has little sympathy for Muller or
Stern, or the advertisers and stations
that back them.
"If you're sponsoring Howard
Stern, you ought to be nervous,"
Bennett said. "You don't own
these airwaves, and there are rules
and regulations.
"Will the nation suffer without
Howard Stern on all the stations he's
been on? I don't think so. Somebody
else will come along."
Either that, or Stern and others like
him will go elsewhere, to satellite
radio perhaps.
Last week, Stern threatened to take
his mostly raunchy, highly rated gig
to unregulated satellite distribution,
which is not subject to federally
mandated decency standards. But the
threat seemed hollow because the fledgling
satellite industry could not afford
Stern.
That is changing.
Satellite on ascent
Satellite radio operators have raised
money in the stock market and are
building their lists of subscribers,
who pay monthly fees for broadcasts.
XM Radio expects to double its audience
this year to 3 million subscribers.
Rival Sirius Satellite Radio has built
a 265,000-customer base after a much
later start.
Recently, Sirius agreed to pay $31
million a year to broadcast National
Football League games.
Merrill Lynch's Nabi figures Sirius
might pay Stern a similar amount--enough
to match what Stern earns from Infinity
Broadcasting and other sources--in
a bid by the radio network to attract
new customers.
No wonder radio industry experts paid
particular attention last week when
Stern warned his listeners that his
days on the free radio dial might
be ending.
"I'm saying goodbye to you now,
because this is it," he told
listeners last week. "These are
the last days of Pompeii, baby."
Stern's detractors see an altogether
different cataclysm at hand: The end
of Sodom and Gomorrah. And partly,
they blame regulators for letting
broadcasting standards fall so low.
Critics of FCC Chairman Michael Powell
say broadcasters felt they would have
free reign under him, particularly
after Powell in his first news conference
as chairman declared, "I don't
think that my government is my nanny."
Powell offered a simple solution to
offensive material: "Turning
it off and controlling your children's
television access."
Three years later, Powell and others
are looking at the issue differently.
Commissioner Michael Copps, one of
two Democrats on the five-member FCC,
said the agency shares blame for any
perceived indecency outbreak because
of its mixed signals and inaction.
"I think we're culprit No. 1
that this has gotten as far as it
has," Copps said. "Hopefully,
now we'll be the vindicator No. 1
and try to see if we can't arrest
this race to the bottom."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Point is, is that you
can find out very easily how corrupt
our government is. Republican and
Democrats. But as of now this whole
“safe America” shit has
to stop. These people are running
our country with one thing in mind.
GOD. That is it. They are slowly but
most definitely turning this country
into what tried to stop over in IRAQ.
We the people can chose what is obscene
and what is not by turning off the
TV or Radio. We don’t need Government
telling us otherwise. This great place
I live in is becoming like a padded
cell. Nobody wants you to get hurt,
but living inside it will make you
go fucking crazy.
Great tyranny always has to start
somewhere. And it has to start small
and seem simple and nothing major.
It has to start with something most
will shrug their shoulders at and
walk away, while others deem it anti
Christ like, and deplorable and disgusting.
So that when the turn of the nation
comes, nobody can stop it because
they didn’t see it coming.
Great leaders are over and done with.
Great leaders have turned into egomaniacs
with a very bad and scary agenda for
you and me alike. No one should be
able to control my daily activities
to the extent of what I watch, read,
see, and talk about.
Church and state are far from separate.
They keep getting closer and closer
as each day passes by us. And when
the day does arrive when the Church
and State line is completely eroded
and gone, this fine country we live
in and call home, will be a Nation
in true turmoil.
The religious wings of this country
will realize when the people as a
whole have had enough of their force
feed ways that man can return to vicious
animal instincts to protect what he
believed as a way of life. Then when
the American people rise up to a revolutionary
power against the Government and the
rules and regulations the religious
movements have put into place, what
they hear on the radio everyday will
be the least of their problems.
Creu |