WASHINGTON, DC – After hitting an all-time high in 2004 – due in large part to the untimely exposure of a single nipple during a Super Bowl halftime show – the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reports that indecency complaints for 2005 amounted to only 17% of the total for 2004.The FCC’s report on consumer inquiries and complaints shows that consumers registered 44,109 complaints concerning indecency/obscenity on radio and TV during the last quarter of 2005. According to the FCC, the lion’s share of those complaints – 42,190 – were logged in December, while were 544 indecency/obscenity complaints submitted in October, and 1,375 in November.
It’s interesting to note that while 2004 had by far the greatest number of total complaints, the number of actual programs generating the complaints was far higher in 2005. Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” accounted for a high percentage of those complaints, demonstrating that the way in which the FCC tracks complaints does not necessarily indicate how much “indecent” or “obscene” content is actually being broadcast.
In 2004, the record 1,405,419 complaints were generated by 314 distinct programs; outside of the Super Bowl halftime, Fox programming lead the list of shows receiving complaints, with the popular cartoon show “Family Guy” among the top generators of consumer complaints.
Last year, by contrast, the total number of complaints fell to 189,362, but the number of individual programs generating the complaints leaped to 720. Within that total, 319 of the offending shows were radio programs, 317 broadcast television shows, and 84 were from programming on cable.
