Saturday Night Live got hit by an F-bomb this week. During a musical performance, Daron Malakian, guitarist for the strangely named band “System of a Down” expressed his enthusiasm at appearing on camera.
Although SNL airs after 10 p.m., and is therefore outside the FCC’s “safe harbor,” chatty SNL fans are a-twitter, according to the New York Daily News.
Alex Richmond of Trenton, NJ, says fuhgeddabout the TV Watch Coalition. What we really need is a coalition to replace crap TV with quality TV.
Sign us up.
In the Trentonian.
Vince Horiuchi, TV columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, revisits the prospect of cable and satellite indecency regulation. To the PTC and the senators who pander to them, he points to the money trail.
“Cable is a greater violator in the indecency arena,” Senator Ted Stevens said at the National Association of Broadcasters’ conference, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
They argue that because cable is in more than 65 percent of American households and nearly as ubiquitous as free over-the-air television, “most viewers don’t differentiate between over-the-air and cable.”
That may be true in terms of the way we group the whole television landscape, but I know I’m watching satellite TV every month I fork out $70 for the pleasure.
That’s what differentiates cable and free TV. We pay money for cable and satellite after making the conscious decision to welcome their programming into our homes. Anyone who doesn’t know what they’re getting with MTV, Comedy Central or HBO probably shouldn’t subscribe to cable or satellite. For them, there’s always PAX.
He concludes: “Allowing government to restrict cable television is acknowledging that we shouldn’t be allowed to make our own choices. In a day and age when we have to make every dollar count in the monthly budget, reserving a chunk for TV means we know what we want. We shouldn’t have government regulators tell us otherwise.”
From the Salt Lake Tribune.
Roberto Lazaro, a columnist for one of Asia’s largest media corporations, is appealing to Filipino TV networks to self-censor. He cleverly couches his appeal in a tribute to mothers. Very Bozellian indeed.
Motherhood means caring for the needs of the physiological needs of the children and of the family. It means nurturing their physical, mental and moral well-being. It means concern for their present and their future. Motherhood is all these and something else besides. That is why we celebrate Mother’s Day to pay tribute to their role in the life of our society and of the whole world.
[…]
These motherhood instincts are to be found in the media’s self-regulating, self-policing principles inherent in the media’s essence of bringing news to the public the way news should be—with a deep sense of media responsibility. And media maturity is—or should be—found in the voluntary creation of control agencies and control measures to which members of the media should also voluntarily submit in the spirit of justice and the common good.
[…]
It is about time that stronger measures were taken by our society beyond what the media can impose on themselves. For if the media could not, who else could?
If the media would not be truly hot on the trail of pornography, then indecency in media entertainment will continue unabated. The moral values of people will continue to deteriorate in the face of the more aggressive promoters of such indecencies. And the irresponsible entertainers will continue making a mockery of the journalistic imperatives of professionalism and integrity.
Read more at ABS-CBN.
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