Inouye ‘Aggressively Preparing’ TV Content Bill
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Balks at Brownback’s Attempt to Amend FCC Budget
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 7/11/2007 5:41:00 PM
The Senate Commerce Committee is “aggressively preparing” bipartisan legislation on the regulation of foul language and excessive violence on television, panel chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) disclosed in a letter Wednesday.
Inouye made the disclosure in an effort to block Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) from trying to add a pair of broadcast-TV-content mandates to the Federal Communications Commission’s fiscal-2008 budget, which is scheduled to be debated by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
Brownback’s amendment would permit the FCC to punish fleeting instances of the F-word on broadcast television and to regulate excessive violence on broadcast TV for the first time. Neither amendment would apply to the cable industry.
Inouye said that although he was “sympathetic” to Brownback’s proposals, they should not be debated in the context of the FCC’s budget. Instead, they deserved to be considered by the Commerce Committee. Inouye is the second-most-senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
“The [Commerce] Committee held a comprehensive hearing on these issues June 26, and our members are aggressively preparing bipartisan legislation to address these issues in a manner that will withstand constitutional scrutiny,” Inouye said, writing to Brownback and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the FCC.
Because the Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over the FCC, Inouye told Brownback and Durbin that he “respectfully must oppose the inclusion of these amendments as part of the [spending bill that includes the FCC’s $313 million budget].”
The letter, however, did not indicate whether Inouye's TV-content bill would apply to cable- and satellite-TV providers, which have historically been exempt from indecency regulations that apply to terrestrial radio and television.
Rebates for Blocking Content?
07/12/2007Genachowksi: Focus On The Unserved
06/22/2009TV Indecency Is Put to a Vote
07/15/2007Senate Panel to Take Up FCC Rules
09/02/2003
