WASHINGTON - Americans are complaining more about what they see on TV and hear on the radio as obscenity complaints rose sharply in the third quarter, according to a government report issued on Wednesday.
Complaints to the Federal Communications Commission about raunchy programming jumped fourfold to 26,185 from 6,161 logged during the previous three months. The increase followed several quarters of big declines.
Although the FCC doesn't release the names of shows that are targets of such complaints, the Parents Television Council filed two complaints in July against shows on ABC and Fox. PTC members often complain en masse via an online e-mail form on the group's Web site.
PTC has filed complaints against ABC's broadcast of "Live 8: A Worldwide Concert" in July when the network let veteran rock band the Who's question "Who the f--- are you?" slip out. Fox's summer thriller "The Inside" also has been targeted by the PTC for depictions of sexual acts.
Although the number of complaints is up, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank backed by media companies, claims that the commission's figures give a false impression.
"The FCC now measures indecency complaints differently than all other types of complaints," said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the outfit. "In so doing, it permits a process whereby indecency complaints appear to be artificially inflated relative to other types of complaints."
Thierer claims that accounting changes at the FCC are giving too much weight to campaigns like those run by PTC.
On July 1, 2003, the agency began tallying each computer-generated complaint sent to the FCC by any advocacy group as an individual complaint, rather than as a single complaint as it had done previously, and early in 2004 the FCC also began counting each complaint even if it was sent by the same person a number of times. The changes grossly overstate the number of people who might actually have concerns about the content of broadcast programming.
"Government data isn't always as accurate or reliable as it could be," Thierer said. "But at least there isn't something mysterious about the way most numbers are gathered or computed. In the case of indecency complaints at the FCC, the numbers are highly suspect."
Despite Thierer's questions, the new numbers are likely to become political grist as the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday announced an "Open Forum on Decency" on Nov. 29.
Although the committee has been attempting to conduct a hearing on the indecency issue for some time, it had been unable to schedule one. The forum appears to have taken the place of a formal hearing. The location and list of speakers has yet to be finalized.
