Tuesday, March 01, 2005

More FCC complaints

Here's some data on how many indecency complaints have been filed with the FCC over the last five years.





Year# of complaints filed# of programs complained aboutNALs issued*
20001111117
20013461527
200213,9223897
2003202,0323753
20041,068,80231412


*--NAL=Notice of Apparent Liability, i.e. a finding that something was indecent. Of the 12 issued in 2004, only one was for something that aired in 2004 (Nipplegate), one was for a 2003 TV show (FOX's Married by America) and the remaining ten were for morning drive-time radio ranging from 2001 to 2003. Click for Source. The programs complained about were heavily weighted toward radio, but radio complaints haven't really increased with the dramatic jump in TV complaints.

So, it appears that the number of programs complained about has decreased; however the number of people offended is on the rise dramatically. I decided to let Excel use its GROWTH() function to see how many complaints will be lodged in 2005, and it tell me that 17,081,713 will complain about a program this year. (In 2006, more than 2 out of every 3 Americans will complain to the FCC.) If the number of programs stays around 300, and we assume each program receives the same number of complaints, then around 57,000 people per episode. That would mean roughly 1 out of every 200 people who watch CSI will complain about it to the federal government. (In 2006, that will jump to 1 out of 14.) But are these people actually watching it?

If you watch something, and you find it offensive, are you likely to watch it again? Apparently so. Or, the complaints come from people who don't watch the show. Should the FCC adopt a rule requiring you to actually have seen the show in order to lodge a complaint about it? The FCC should set up a website for people to anticomplain. That is, they should allow people to file a statement saying, "Thursday night's episode of CSI was not indecent. Bad TV, perhaps, but not indecent."

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