There are organizations out there that make a living complaining about indecent programming being broadcast over America’s airwaves, but there aren’t all that many citizens expressing any concern.
The FCC’s stats are in for the first quarter of 2013, and they just art not in any way alarming.
In January, the FCC fielded all on 91 indecency/obscenity complaints; the tally spiked in February when there were 375; and in March, there were 153.
To add just a smidgeon of perspective, the total number of complaints – 619 – compares very favorably to the 20,584 do not call complaints filed during the quarter.
It also stacks up nicely against the total of 15,330 full power radio stations and 1,783 television stations that could have been targeted by a complaint.
If each of those stations is on air 24/7, the 619 complaints came out of almost 37 million hours of broadcast air time.
And if 619 Americans complained, that means that some 317,000,000 did not.
RBR-TVBR observation: It would appear that whatever the loudly-voiced opinion of the content nannies, broadcast programming just is not seen as an issue by the vast majority of Americans.
Further, broadcasters could easily and legally go blue beginning at 10PM. If they did this within certain bounds, they would be safe from FCC action but would surely attract citizen complaints nonetheless. The fact that broadcasters do not take advantage of safe harbor to that extent is commendable and a clear demonstration that the serving the public interest is a standard part of the broadcast programming formula.
