{"id":2059758,"date":"2025-09-30T14:25:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2059758"},"modified":"2025-09-30T14:25:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:25:02","slug":"how-entertainment-outlets-handled-the-feds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/how-entertainment-outlets-handled-the-feds\/","title":{"rendered":"How Entertainment Outlets Handled the Feds"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tFor broadcasters in the twentieth century \u2014 the century when broadcasting was the main transmission belt for mass communications in America, unlike the present century \u2014 the phrase they all knew by heart sounded less like a reminder than a threat. The granting of a broadcast license by the Federal Communications Commission was contingent upon the licensee operating in \u201cthe public interest, convenience, or necessity.\u201d The vagueness of the language left plenty of room for interpretation and anxiety. Besides generating obscene profits, what exactly was the proper civic role of a radio or television station \u2014 Educational programming? Political forums? Tornado warnings? And when did the feds have the authority to swoop in and turn off the spigot by lifting the license (aka \u201cpermission to print money\u201d)?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe mix of government regulation, broadcaster responsibilities, and the public interest in allowing entertainers to mouth off over the airwaves has come into sharp relief recently due to a single line<\/a> in a monologue by Jimmy Kimmel. What ratcheted up the Kimmel controversy from the usual kerfuffle over a wardrobe malfunction or obscene utterance was the intervention of FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who said Kimmel should be suspended and \u201cwe can do this the easy way or the hard way.\u201d The head fed, of course, also weighed in from his digital lectern.\u00a0If not exactly a jackboot on the neck, the pressure on Disney from the FCC underscored who really controlled the means of communication.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe big complication for electronic media in terms of First Amendment protection is that, unlike print, neither film nor broadcasting was on the radar of the Founding Fathers.\u00a0The motion picture industry engaged in a prolonged legal and cultural battle to gain recognition as a medium of free expression \u2014 until 1952 it was considered \u201ca business pure and simple\u201d and could be regulated like food and drugs.\u00a0 Only in the late 1960s did it secure a safe place under the umbrella of the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy contrast, broadcasting over the airwaves has always been a special case. Radio and television signals are transmitted over the electromagnetic spectrum (quaintly called \u201cthe ether\u201d in the trade press) that encircles earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u00a0The bandwidths or frequencies that carry the signals (channels to us non-engineers) are likened to the lanes of a freeway. To prevent the literal crossing of signals, a traffic cop (the government) needs to allocate and regulate the space.\u00a0From this vantage, the spectrum is publicly owned real estate, like a national park, over which individual broadcasters have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the land.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1927, the U.S. Congress passed the first major enabling legislature for electronic communication, the Radio Act. It created an omnibus regulatory agency with the authority to allocate space on the spectrum, without which a broadcaster could not beam out signals and thereby sell audiences to advertisers. Broadcasters did not own the space; they were tenants with a limited government lease. It also marked the first appearance of the money phrase \u201cthe public interest, convenience, or necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThus, unlike disgruntled newspaper readers, whose only resort was to write an angry letter to the editor, radio listeners could now vent their frustrations by going over the heads of a local affiliate and complaining directly to the government. In 1929, a group of Protestant ministers sent a resolution to the Federal Radio Commission protesting the incessant cigarette advertising on radio and arguing, sensibly enough, that \u201cthe public interest, convenience, and necessity is not served in what seems to be a campaign to transform 20,000,000 boys and girls into cigarette addicts.\u201d (After the Surgeon General\u2019s Report on Smoking and Health in 1964, the FCC basically agreed, but it took an act of Congress in 1971 to ban cigarette advertisements from radio and television.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1934, in tune with the outlook of FDR\u2019s New Deal, the 1927 act was replaced with more expansive legislation giving the commission greater power and purview, including over the hegemonic AT&T, the telephone oligopoly. The watchdog-regulator was now called the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, which, like FBI, became a set of enduring initials among the New Deal\u2019s alphabet agencies.\u00a0 Significantly,\u00a0the 1934 act specifically forbade censorship, flatly stating that the government did not have \u201cthe power of censorship over radio communications or signals transmitted by any radio station.\u201d In the next years, the FCC assumed provenance over FM and TV, but in terms of programming content it remained mainly hands-off. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, as radio penetrated every pore of American life in the 1930s, controversies erupted and members of the public demanded government clampdowns over flash points such as Father Charles E. Coughlin, the antisemitic radio priest whose sermons plagiarized from Joseph Goebbels, and the opinionated radio commentators Walter Winchell (who was anti-Nazi) and Boake Carter (who was anti-New Deal).\u00a0After the broadcast of Orson Welles\u2019 alien invasion docu-drama The<\/em> War of the Worlds<\/em> on October 30, 1938, the FCC was flooded<\/a> with letters from traumatized earthlings. Yet even after the War of the Worlds<\/em> frenzy, the FCC held no formal hearings and exacted no penalties on CBS or its affiliates \u2014 though the networks agreed that words like \u201cflash\u201d and \u201cbulletin\u201d would not be used in simulated news broadcasts and fictional plays.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe most sensational collision of the FCC, the radio networks, and notions of the public interest was inspired not by Orson Welles but by another multihyphenate auteur, the screen goddess and provocateur Mae West. At 8:00 p.m., Sunday, December 12, 1937, West appeared with actor Don Ameche on the Chase & Sanborn<\/em> Hour<\/em>, a variety show broadcast over NBC\u2019s Red Network. (NBC was so enormous it was divided into two separate networks, the Red and Blue, which eventually became an antitrust issue. FCC facilitated the break-up of the duopoly and in 1943 the Blue Network became ABC.)<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tMae West, pictured in 1932.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tA ten-minute skit on the show entitled \u201cThe Garden of Eden,\u201d written by radio playwright Arch Oboler, featured West cast to type as Eve in a kind of pre-Code version of the story of Genesis. As was usual with Mae West, the sexual charge was sparked not so much by the words she spoke but how she spoke them \u2014 seductive inflections, suggestive moans.\u00a0She exuded the passion of a temptress eager to commit the original sin. After Eve persuades Adam to sample the forbidden fruit, he awakens to the allure of her eyes and lips followed by a few seconds of fill-in-the-blanks radio silence. \u201cAlong the way, it was made abundantly clear that Eve-Mae was hot-bothered and cuddle curious,\u201d wrote Robert Landry in Variety<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFilthy, sacrilegious, and irreverent!\u201d howled Rev. Dr. Maurice Sheehy of Catholic University, promising that the Legion of Decency would turn its attention from cinema to the radio networks. Hollywood Reporter<\/em> radio critic Bill Bloecher was less appalled but of the same mind. \u201cA most flagrant violation of good taste \u2014 and more certainly for a Sunday show,\u201d he wrote. \u201cEven without the Westian insinuations, it is difficult to understand how it passed the so-called censorship of the [advertising]\u00a0 agency [J. Walter Thompson] and network.\u201d In damage control mode, NBC scrambled onto the air with an abject apology. \u201cRadio faces the most aroused public criticism it has yet encountered as civic, church, and educational leaders were swamped with demands for reform which would put broadcasting under the most severe disciplinary censorship that has ever fettered the amusement world,\u201d ran an alarmed account in The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder duress, the FCC convened an emergency meeting on the matter of Mae West. Doing its due diligence, the commission demanded NBC provide the script, a wax recording of the show, the contract with Chase & Sanborn<\/em>, and a list of the 59 stations that had broadcast the show. After perusing and listening, FCC chairman Frank R. McNinch chided NBC for beaming out \u201csuggestive, vulgar, immoral\u201d material that \u201cmay be offensive to the great mass of right-thinking, clean minded American citizens,\u201d but he took no official action against either the network or the affiliate stations. A chastened NBC promised that biblical mockery would never again be on its dial. For good measure, Mae West was cast out of the network \u2014 indeed, all mentions of Mae West\u2019s name on radio were forbidden.(West was uncancelable; she was back on the air in a few months.)\u00a0FDR did not feel compelled to weigh in on the controversy.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower, the FCC seldom dipped into content mainly because a sponsor-supported medium seeking 100 percent acceptability steered clear of culturally or politically incendiary material. In the postwar era, the main complaint broadcasters had with the FCC was not over programming but over the \u201cfreeze\u201d put in place on new station licenses from 1948-1952.\u00a0Early adopters who had purchased television sets with the expectation of tuning in to a local affiliate were left with nothing to watch but snow.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot even the Cold War atmospherics \u2014 of the non-electromagnetic kind \u2014 compelled the FCC to intervene in programming.\u00a0After the publication of\u00a0 Red Channels<\/em>: A Report on Communist Influence in Radio and Television<\/em>, a list of 151 artists with allegedly subversive connections, broadcasters imitated Hollywood and instituted a blacklist<\/a> of suspect artists and required loyalty oaths from employees. With the sponsors, the networks, and the stations all satisfied with the arrangement, opponents of the blacklist turned to the FCC as the court of last resort. The Authors League of America and the ACLU each petitioned the FCC for redress, arguing that \u201cthe blacklisting of artists was against the public interest and that operators who condone it lack [the] proper qualifications to hold licenses.\u201d Their case was hurt by the fact that blacklisted artists did not want to testify before the FCC and generate more career-killing publicity.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt hardly mattered: the FCC refused to hold hearings. FCC chairman Wayne Coy said that blacklisting was \u201cnot properly the subject of a general hearing by the Commission\u201d and that \u201cthe day-to-day operation of a radio or television station is primarily the responsibility of the individual station licensee. Matters of business and artistic judgement, including the selection of programs and talent, fall within the\u00a0 scope of the exercise of that responsibility.\u201d\u00a0In short, the networks and affiliate stations had the right to fire anyone they wanted for whatever reason.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tWalter Cronkite (back to camera) and FCC chair Newton N. Minow.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe next FCC regime was not as hands off.\u00a0It is worth remembering that the first FCC chairman to put the fear of God into broadcasters was appointed by a liberal Democrat to wield the medium to his ends: JFK\u2019s selection of the like-minded media activist Newton Minow.\u00a0On May 9, 1961, in a famous address to the National Association of Broadcasters, Minow declared that television was \u201ca vast wasteland\u201d \u2014 a \u00a0phrase that stuck \u2014 and demanded that a JFK-watered oasis be created \u2014 or else. \u201cI say to you now: renewal will not be pro forma in the future,\u201d\u00a0Minow intoned menacingly. \u201cThere is nothing permanent or sacred about a broadcast license.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June 1961, the FCC held hearings two weeks of public hearings in New York on the \u201ccreative aspects\u201d of television programming, pegged to Minow\u2019s vast wasteland screed. The hearings had a HUAC-like vibe to them \u2014 a star-studded cast of \u201cfriendlies\u201d and \u201cunfriendlies\u201d called on the carpet by the government, though the charge this time was not communist subversion but aesthetic malfeasance.\u00a0 \u201cNever before in history have writers been paid so much for writing so badly,\u201d said Writers Guild of America chairman David Davidson, who would know.\u00a0Up-market producer David Susskind railed for four hours about the awfulness of the boob tube.\u00a0Testifying for the defense, variety show hosts Ed Sullivan, Garry Moore, and Perry Como vigorously stuck up for the medium that made them.\u00a0Sullivan said Susskind\u2019s criticism of TV was pure sour grapes. \u201cNobody in TV has been given so many opportunities on all three networks. Nobody has had so many flops.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe broadcasters got the message from the feds and responded with a spike in prime-time documentaries and public affairs shows.\u00a0JFK-friendly programming also happened to bloom in the former wasteland: A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy, <\/em>produced by CBS and telecast on February 14, 1962, by both<\/em> CBS and NBC, featured the fawning CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood trailing after the First Lady and marveling at her interior decorating; and ABC\u2019s Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment<\/em>, a cinema verit\u00e9<\/em> documentary produced by Robert Drew and telecast on October 21, 1963, celebrated JFK and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy outmaneuvering Alabama governor George Wallace as he tried to prevent the desegregation of the University of Alabama. Republican congressmen accused ABC of telecasting a \u201cstaged performance\u201d and demanded the FCC investigate ABC, which did not happen.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps the comedic-political precedent closest to the Kimmel affair is the extended showdown between artist and network caused by The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour<\/em> (CBS, 1968-70), at the time the sole counter-cultural redoubt in prime time.\u00a0 After the clean-cut comedy duo got a severe case of the 1960s, they delighted in injecting drug references, sexual innuendo, and anti-war sentiments into the family hour entertainment.\u00a0In 1969, CBS executives yielded to public complaints and affiliate blowback and cancelled the show. \u201cAn artist should be able to reflect his views on a variety program,\u201d Tom Smothers said, sounding very 2025. \u201cIt\u2019s important for television to reflect what\u2019s happening in the streets, on campuses, and in the ghetto. There should be some network that reflects the changing times.\u201d Richard W. Jencks, president of CBS, dissented, telling a meeting of affiliate station owners that someone had to define the line \u201cbetween entertainment and propaganda\u201d and that someone was he and not Tom Smothers. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tTommy Smothers, George Harrison and Dick Smothers on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSmothers had an unlikely ally in FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, who believed that free speech \u201cnot only permits but compels the dissemination of anti-social material.\u201d \u00a0Johnston pointed out the FCC got plenty of letters from viewers indignant over The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour <\/em>and Rowan & Martin\u2019s Laugh-In<\/em>, but \u201che had never raised a question about programming with the networks.\u201d Jencks was less open-minded than the FCC: CBS would not allow a forum \u201cfor the expression of hateful views\u201d that were also \u201cin questionable taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the age of cable, satellite, and digital media, the protective oversight of the FCC regarding the public interest, convenience, or necessity might seem anachronistic because almost no one receives televisual \u201cbroadcasts\u201d (itself now something of a misnomer) over the air.\u00a0The new modes of reception (private not public) explain why the cancellation of Disney+ subscriptions concentrated the minds of corporate executives more powerfully than the black outs by affiliate stations.\u00a0 It also explains why, say, South Park<\/em> or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver<\/em> aren\u2019t in the crosshairs.\u00a0Though still on the books, the protocols established for broadcasting in 1927 might seem to be a classic instance of technological-cultural lag.<\/p>\n

\n\tOr not.\u00a0In asserting a public interest in making the airwaves safe for the First Amendment, the words of a Mae West or a Jimmy Kimmel may be the best place to draw a line in the ether. \u00a0\u201cBureaucrats itchy for more power pick on such thing as this Mae West broadcast,\u201d the New York Daily News<\/em> editorialized in 1938. \u201cThis is the way government censorship gets its start.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hollywoodreporter.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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