On April 7th, 2003 I was sitting in front of my television screen in my Los Angeles apartment diligently waiting to find out how these contrived marriages from FOX’s reality show Married By America were going to play out.

You see the premise behind Married By America was, there’s a set of guys and girls and it was our job as America to pair them up- they were then going to go through a series of speed dates as they prepared for their eventual marriage.

As the show came to a close they aired an episode where the men and women about to be married had a series of bachelor/bachelorette parties. The scene was nothing more or less worse than what I’ve seen aired on MTV during their Spring Break week. It showed a couple blurred body parts, lots of whipped cream, and well- hot ass dancing. The entire duration of the contested parts… 10.5 seconds.

While the scenes were blurred, the FCC insisted:

“While it is true that the nude female breasts and buttocks shown were pixilated, the commission has never held that the full exposure of sexual or excretory organs is required to satisfy the first prong of the broadcast indecency standard.”

Where were these indecency standards when the show first premiered? I mean talk about indecent, what about the whole concept behind the show?

The FCC proposed a 1.2 million dollar indecency fine for the aired footage! However; today the FCC erased nearly all of those fines and simply ordered 13 Fox-owned affiliate stations throughout America in markets that saw the most complaints in regards to that particular episode to pay a total of $91,000 in fines. Those markets include: Detroit, Minneapolis, Tampa, Roanoke, Des Moines, and Yakima and Charlestown. (Go Washington!)

The FCC was in a scramble to get out this nearly 5 year old case since the FCC regulations have a 5 year statute of limitations on enforcing anything they deem to be indecent. The FCC had barely two months left to make this ruling before the entire 1.2 million dollar fine was erased forever.

Rupert Murdoch, the owner of FOX, is still not happy with FCC’s decision. I don’t think it’s a matter of money as much as it’s a matter of making a point. Murdoch is considering an appeal.

What kind of people sit in a room and watch endless hours of television logging anything that could be deemed ‘indecent’?

Oh wait… Buzzkilled.com!

[Source, Source, Photosource]

Popularity: 2%