FCC's regulation of media owners lacking

By now you've likely heard of the universally decried indecency that occurred on a recent broadcast of Monday Night Football, but for the cave-dwellers living among us, let me briefly recap the incident. In a skit designed to further promote ABC's hit show Desperate Housewives, its very blonde cast member Nicolette Sheridan appeared in a towel in the Eagles' locker room with wide receiver Terrell Owens, begging him to forget the game and go away with her. She then dropped the towel, revealing her bare back to the camera, and leaped into Owens' arms, shocking conservatives everywhere.

Was it racy? Sure, but not so racy that the clip couldn't be replayed hundreds of times in the news in the ensuing rush to criticize. Was it crass? Sure, but it's not as if there has historically been an iron wall between sports and sex -- just take a look at the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the incident was the way in which it reinforced racial stereotypes about black men and white women. Similarly, last January saw Justin Timberlake rip off Janet Jackson's clothing -- a representation of white male sexual violence against a black woman to be sure -- with Janet taking the blame for choosing to show her breast. But I digress.

Regardless of which criticism one offers, it's clear that there is content on our airwaves that probably shouldn't be there. The question we are left with is why. It's not as if the NFL couldn't have foreseen a public outrage over the combination of partial nudity with professional football. Therefore, one can only reason that public shock was what it wanted.

It's hardly a new tactic, after all. Television has sold itself and its advertisers' products through shock for decades. Long gone are the days when Elvis' gyrating hips were considered too stimulating to air -- although those hips were surely part of his marketing strategy even then. Mass media seek to sell to a mass audience, and in so doing they often appeal to the lowest common denominator.

The Federal Communication Commission's response to these incidents has been to increase the fines for offensive content. After the Justin Timberlake incident, fines have been increased on radio and television. The producers at ABC were surely aware of this trend, leaving one to question the efficacy of the FCC's approach.

If the problem is that media conglomerates appeal to the lowest common denominator among their viewers, then the solution cannot be fines alone. Rather, we need greater diversity in our media choices to allow niche marketing that can appeal to the better angels of our nature -- programming that recognizes that the public is not just a mass of consumers, but citizens and families as well. To achieve such diversity in content, we need greater diversity in ownership.

This runs counter to the recent trend. While the FCC has increased its regulation over what can be shown on television, it has decreased the regulation of who can own the airwaves, and the big media companies have only gotten bigger. Now, every major network is owned by a company that also owns a major movie studio and several cable networks. For example, CBS, which aired last year's Super Bowl, and MTV, which produced the halftime special, are both owned by Viacom. Deregulation in the '90s that allowed corporations to buy more radio stations in a given market paved the way for Clear Channel's dominance. Now, the FCC is trying to do the same with television stations.

This media concentration matters. Following comments critical of President Bush made by one member of the Dixie Chicks, Clear Channel temporarily took them off their airwaves, censoring their work because of political beliefs.

Some argue that bigger media companies allow for more diverse offerings, but again, the deregulation of radio shows just the opposite. In talk radio, it took an outside firm, Air America, to get progressive alternatives on air. In music radio, these large firms often air essentially the same signal for multiple cities out of one broadcast booth, with on-air personalities dropping in local names every now and again to make it seem like the programming is all local. It's therefore no accident that pop/rock radio sounds the same pretty much everywhere.

While using shock to sell may be a time-tested tactic, if anything, the lessons of radio deregulation show that bigger media companies breed more marketing to the lowest common denominator. So while the FCC continues its failing policy of treating the symptoms of this coarsening of culture through fines and regulation of content, its deregulation of media ownership only sets the stage for even coarser culture to come.

Fundamentally, the FCC needs to start treating the public not as consumers to be sated by larger, more efficient media conglomerates. Instead, the FCC needs to start seeing a public filled with families and citizens whose needs are not purely economic. Otherwise, we can only expect more bared backs (and fronts) and the public shock such content is designed to provoke.Kevin Collins is a junior Political Science major from Milwaukee. ...And Justice For All appears on Tuesdays.

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