Television Censorship

SIGNIFICANCE: Television’s widespread presence in homes and its ready availability have made it a central fixture of censorship issues.

When television became widely available in the second half of the twentieth century, it attracted many critics. Some observers doubted whether the various talents and interests responsible for television programming made the medium anything other than a wasteland. Although in the eyes of many critics, television has many channels but “nothing on,” attempts to control the content of television programming arose from many quarters. Government, television networks, advertisers, local stations, grassroots groups, and private individuals tried to censor television, but the role of government, at least in Western democracies, has generally been relatively minor. More significant have been the efforts of interests such as networks and advertisers to attract and retain audiences. This led to a general policy of shunning controversy that could alienate audiences and advertisers.

The most common areas in which efforts to restrict television programming have centered have been violence, sexual conduct, and objectionable language. The 1990s saw renewed attention to the issue of television violence, especially, which renewed attempts to recruit the government to a more active role in regulating the content of television programming.

Television and Children

In the twenty-first century, children’s interaction with audiovisual media shifted away from traditional television and toward streaming platforms, mobile applications, and video-sharing services such as YouTube and TikTok. With a single swipe or tap, children can access an array of content—some curated for their age group, and much of it not. This shift raised new concerns about media regulation, particularly because traditional broadcasting rules no longer apply in much of the digital space. Accepting that content fit for adults might not be appropriate for children, the US Supreme Court has generally been less protective of objectionable speech when young children are a part of an audience. In Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978), for example, the Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) power to sanction a radio station that aired during the afternoon a comic monologue by the comedian George Carlin laced with “adult” language. A key factor in the Court’s conclusion was its assumption that young children might be in the radio audience. It therefore held that the FCC was authorized to protect children from inadvertent exposure to indecent language, even when the language was not technically obscene. The presence of children in television audiences has also spurred efforts to enforce positive obligations on the part of programmers to include significant educational programming within their television schedules, such as the Children’s Television Act of 1990. These kinds of programming obligations may be viewed as a kind of censorship, since they prevent broadcasters from airing the content of their choice in favor of educational programming. However, in 2019, the FCC revised its children’s television rules, arguing that the media environment had changed substantially since the 1990s.

Government Regulation of Television

In the United States, the FCC is the federal agency charged by law with the task of overseeing matters relating to radio and television. The Federal Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcast programming as it interferes with free speech rights. In general, however, federal law requires the FCC to grant licenses for broadcasting in a manner calculated to serve the public interest and to review the content of broadcast programming for its adherence to this same standard. Accordingly, American courts have found that neither the ban on censorship nor the First Amendment to the Constitution prevent the FCC from attempting to ensure that television, and other broadcast programming, serves the public interest. The rationale for this is that there is a limited number of frequencies on which to broadcast; these frequencies are viewed as a public resource, like water or publicly owned land. The government, therefore, has the responsibility to allocate the resources of the airspace in a manner that serves the public interest.

The Federal Criminal Code prohibits the broadcast of “obscene, indecent, or profane language” by means of radio communication and thus in theory justifies sanctions leveled against broadcasting stations that air such language. In the years after the Supreme Court’s holding in Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation that the FCC could monitor—at least to some extent—broadcast indecency, the FCC generally took the position that only the seven words highlighted in the Pacifica case were forbidden and only if used repeatedly. When the FCC did seek to police indecent broadcasting, it tended to focus its censorial energies predominantly in radio broadcasting rather than television. Occasionally, the commission sanctioned television stations for overstepping the bounds of decency. For example, in 1987, the FCC fined a television station for airing an R-rated film during prime time. The US has not been alone in finding room among the government’s powers to oversee the decency of television broadcasting. In Great Britain, the Television Act of 1954 contained a provision banning programming offensive to good taste or likely to incite violence. Britain’s Obscene Publications Act of 1959 was extended to broadcast media through subsequent legislations in 1990 and later in 1996, and it forbids content deemed obscene under the deprave and corrupt standard. In 1992, Congress passed a law that, as later interpreted by the courts, requires the FCC to restrict indecent content on broadcast radio and television between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., reinforcing the broader regulatory framework governing broadcast decency.

Following the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy in 2004, when Janet Jackson’s breast—which was covered with a nipple shield—was exposed for one second due to a wardrobe malfunction, debate about FCC control over broadcasting and indecency standards reignited. The FCC received over half a million indecency complaints and fined the network CBS $550,000, which was ultimately voided by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011. In response, several networks increased their broadcast delays of live programming by several seconds to enable broadcasters to edit out or cut away from scenes that could be considered inappropriate. The controversy also prompted the passage of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005, which increased FCC fines and penalties for networks that aired indecent or profane content.

In 2004, in response to the Super Bowl halftime show controversy, the FCC updated its policy to prohibit “single uses of vulgar words.” In 2002 and 2003, Cher and Nicole Richie used expletives during the Fox Network’s broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards. Although the FCC had previously allowed isolated expletives during live broadcasts, the commission issued fines to Fox for broadcasting profane language, arguing that the policy on “fleeting” instances of profanity were merely staff letters that did not accurately represent FCC policy. In 2009, in a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld FCC regulations banning “fleeting expletives” on television in its ruling in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., but it did not impose monetary sanctions for those broadcasts. In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “The FCC’s new policy and its order finding the broadcasts at issue were neither arbitrary nor capricious.” In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen G. Breyer argued that the FCC had failed to adequately explain why it had changed its policy and found that the fines issued to Fox were arbitrary and capricious. Despite the Court’s ruling in favor of the FCC, the 2009 decision stated that “the court did not definitively settle the First Amendment implications of allowing a federal agency to censor broadcasts,” thus returning that issue to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. A separate FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. case, decided in 2012, found vague regulations on indecency to be unconstitutional but upheld the FCC’s authority to issue and enforce nonvague regulations, in the public interest, without violating the First Amendment.

Broadcasting Safe Harbors

The critics of government attempts to purge the airwaves of indecent material in the interests of children have often complained that these attempts threaten to make children the measuring rod of all programming suitability. Concern for protecting children from broadcast material unsuitable for their age has sometimes been accompanied by recognition that child viewers of television tend to decrease as evening progresses. This social reality prompted the proposal that objectionable television programming be reserved for later evening hours, when most children have gone to bed. For example, in the US, the television networks and the National Association of Broadcasters in the mid-1970s adopted a family viewing policy. This policy provided that programs aired from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. suit the whole family unless the networks provided a specific warning advising parents otherwise. In 1976, however, a federal district court found that this viewing policy violated antitrust law. By the late 1980s, the FCC had created a safe harbor between midnight and 6 a.m., when indecent material might be broadcast as long as stations warned about the offensive material. Shortly thereafter, however, the FCC faced increasing public pressure to restrict indecent programming. It began to push for a ban on indecent programming until a federal appeals court ruled that such a ban would be unconstitutional. A year later, federal courts ruled that even the restriction of indecent material to the safe-harbor period of midnight to 6 a.m. was unconstitutional. The FCC relented somewhat in the face of this decision, but continued to enforce a ban on indecent programming from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Great Britain has also followed a similar pattern, treating 9 p.m. as a time after which programming unsuitable for children might be aired. Great Britain had enforced before 1957 the so-called toddlers truce between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., when programming was expected to air with a special regard for children. However, the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act 2023 reflects a shift away from these earlier time-based broadcasting controls toward a system that places greater responsibility on digital platforms.

Censorship by Networks and Program Executives

Television censorship may take the form of enforced government prescriptions regarding the content of programming. More commonly, however, censorship occurs not as edicts descending from government but as self-imposed restrictions on programming. For example, Ed Sullivan required the Rolling Stones to change the lyrics of their song “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” in the group’s 1967 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Similarly, the producer of the countercultural comedy show Saturday Night Live, though initially surprised by Sinead O’Connor’s guest appearance in October 1992, in which she tore up a picture of the pope, reasserted control when the program aired again sometime later by substituting rehearsal footage in the place of the controversial episode. The Saturday Night Live program also illustrates the role of networks in television censorship. Saturday Night Live’s writers and producers have regularly clashed with NBC’s censors and executives. In general, the power of networks over the producers of particular programming has declined as the networks have lost segments of their audiences to premium cable television, recording devices, and original programming produced by subscription services such as Netflix.

Censorship by Sponsors and Advertisers

In the early years of television, popular television series such as the Philco Television Playhouse (1948–55) and Kraft Television Theater (1947–58) were, as their names suggest, sponsored by a single company whose products were advertised during the series. This close relationship between sponsor and series created ample opportunities for a sponsor to exert control over the content of a series. Thus, although this period of television programming has sometimes been called the golden age of television, the sponsors of the programs during this period have earned criticism for their successful attempts to mold programming to suit the tastes of their intended audiences. Once television programming escaped the concept of a single sponsorship in favor of multiple commercial sponsors, the power of any one sponsor was lessened.

Television Violence

A concern for television violence has existed practically since television became widely available. Attempts to articulate standards for violence have varied considerably. In 1991, New Zealand’s Broadcast Standards Authority issued a Code of Practices that cautioned against broadcasting the infliction of pain by unfamiliar methods or combining violence and sexual titillation. Great Britain’s Code of Practices, published in 1989 by the Broadcasting Standards Council, warned producers against including gratuitous violence to bolster the appeal of otherwise weak material. However, assessments of the suitability of particular scenes of violence for children have not remained static. In Britain, for example, James Bond films were originally classified for adult audiences only, but by the late twentieth century, they might be deliberately broadcast for a family audience. In the US, critics of television violence have sometimes targeted for protest cartoon violence—such as the mutual violence the cat and mouse duo Tom and Jerry inflicted upon each other—that a previous generation had found more amusing than threatening.

In the United States, concern over violence on television has found expression since the beginning of television’s widespread availability in the 1950s. Congress held hearings on the effect of television violence on children during the mid-1950s, the early 1960s, and throughout most of the 1970s. Although the decade of the 1980s saw relatively little furor over this subject, a rising concern for reports of random violence in American society and reports of viewers copying events on television restored the issue of television violence to the public forefront toward the end of that decade. A five-year-old viewer of Beavis and Butt-Head (1993-97; 2002-03; 2011) imitated the characters by setting his house on fire, killing his two-year-old sister. Two viewers of a film broadcast on television imitated a scene in which characters lay down in the middle of a highway to demonstrate their courage; both viewers were killed. Critics of government regulation pointed out that control of television violence would have done nothing to stop these copycat incidents, since Beavis and Butt-Head aired on cable television and the two people who laid down on a highway were imitating a film rather than a television program.

One copycat incident that reached the courts resulted in a finding of no liability on the part of a television network. NBC broadcast the made-for-TV movie program Born Innocent in September 1974, in which a girl was raped with a plumber’s helper—a tool that aids plumbers and pipefitters with repairing and maintaining pipes. Four days later, several boys who had seen and discussed the program raped a nine-year-old girl with a Coke bottle. A California appellate court ultimately held that NBC could not be found to have incited the boys to this action and thus could not be found liable.

By the early 1990s, the critics of television violence in the United States had gained sufficient influence to persuade Congress to begin a search for implementing greater restrictions. Congress passed the Television Program Improvement Act of 1990, which created a three-year antitrust exemption for various broadcast media interests. This exemption allowed broadcast media to work together to produce voluntary guidelines for reducing the amount of violence on television. The concern over television violence reached a crescendo in the mid-1990s and ultimately influenced the Telecommunications Act of 1996, federal legislation requiring television manufacturers to begin equipping all televisions with a V-chip. The V-chip is intended to enable parents to identify television programs with certain categories of objectionable material—including television violence—and to block these programs from being displayed by televisions in their homes. Canadian television had already begun experimenting with use of the V-chip before its adoption in the US. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not require television programmers to rate their programs, but many began doing so voluntarily, favoring such voluntary action over continued government involvement. Opponents of the V-chip provision claimed that it would inevitably discourage programmers from including material that might cause parents to block a program, since advertising revenues would suffer from such a loss of viewers. Thus, these opponents argued, programmers would self-censor their broadcasts far more than previously.

Film Editing

Television programming includes programs created especially for that medium and films screened initially in cinemas. Films transferred from cinema to television are routinely edited to fit a particular time slot or to censor objectionable elements. Like many forms of external censorship, the censorship of film transplanted to television has the effect of encouraging filmmakers to engage in self-censorship from the outset of their production efforts. Film producers with an eye on an eventual television market may choose to exercise restraint regarding objectionable elements to avoid later cuts by television producers over which they will have no control and which might threaten the coherence of their films.

International Cultural Concerns and Television

Television transmissions effortlessly penetrate national boundaries, both when broadcasters in one nation deliberately target another nation to receive television signals or when signals inadvertently spill over from one territorial sovereignty to another. Residents of the northeastern US may watch Canadian television. Texans may receive signals broadcast from Mexico. French television viewers may catch shows from Germany. The encroachment of uninvited television programming has prompted some nations to seek ways of curbing what they see as threatening influences from beyond their borders. Especially in the light of technologies such as direct satellite broadcasting, nations lacking access of their own to this technology have not always been enthusiastic when made the recipient of either satellite television signals intentionally targeted for these nations or signals which have unintentionally spilled over from another target. Satellite television signals may be used to communicate propaganda from one nation to another. This potential has fueled arguments, most prevalent among nonindustrial nations such as Cuba and certain of the former Soviet bloc nations which lack satellite television technology themselves, that the recipient nations should have the right of program control and be entitled to prior authorization before being made the target of these television signals. India has launched efforts to control foreign broadcast signals by investing in an expensive receiving station intended to monitor broadcasts that penetrate India’s territory. A show like Baywatch (1989–1999), which features attractive young women in bathing suits, may be acceptable in the US, but Iranian authorities have expressed a different view.

Nations concerned about the influence of foreign television signals have employed various defensive measures. Some have attempted to jam unwanted broadcasts, though this has become increasingly difficult with advances in technology. Others have used trade agreements to restrict the cross-border flow of television and film—an approach that functions as a form of censorship. The two most common reasons proffered by nations seeking to restrict the availability of foreign television and film to domestic viewers are the risks of polluting the domestic culture with foreign influences and the competitive danger posed to domestic media producers by foreign competitors. Cultural censorship of television in the international context has many illustrations. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) would not air the popular children’s television program Sesame Street (1969 – ) in Britain because of objections to its foreignness. The BBC determined that Sesame Street communicated predominantly American values and declined to allow British youth to be inculcated with these values.

Beginning in the 2010s, streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime gained significant popularity; these platforms were not subject to the same regulatory oversight as traditional cable television, decentralizing content control and giving control over acceptable boundaries to viewers rather than government agencies.

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