Navigating TV's Shifting Taste Boundaries

NAVIGATING TV'S SHIFTING TASTE BOUNDARIES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Rebecca Dana rebecca.dana@wsj.com]
Directors and producers are deploying new tactics to get spicy material into television shows. Exactly what network standards will allow is a particularly touchy subject this season, as broadcasters struggle to walk a fine line between the television audience's growing appetite for steamy fare and the Federal Communications Commission and partisan watchdog groups' shrinking tolerance for it. The FCC's concerns aren't just about nudity. Last year, the broadcast networks sued to block the FCC's profanity policy, which presumes all utterances of two common four-letter words to be shocking or sexual in nature. An appeals court in New York suspended the policy, and now the FCC is asking the Supreme Court to hear the case so the commission can resume its crackdown. The Supreme Court could announce any day whether it will accept the case. Meanwhile, the conservative watchdog group Parents Television Council has launched several campaigns against prime-time television programs, including one seeking to punish NBC for sexual content in the season finale of "Las Vegas" and another opposing the broadcasting of edited episodes of the Showtime serial killer drama "Dexter" on CBS. But even as the penalties for testing the limits of decency have gotten harsher, the incentives have grown. Audiences flocked to this season's most-titillating new offerings, driving up ratings for provocative shows like CW's "Gossip Girl," NBC's "Lipstick Jungle" and ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money," while leaving tamer programs such as CBS's "Kid Nation" and NBC's "Journeyman" to waste away.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120484915829718055.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal
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* Vigorous Indecency Policing: The Vise Tightens
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/03/07/daily.1/