October 12, 2003

UPDATE: The FCC has leveled its second largest fine ever ($357,000) against Infinity Broadcasting, the parent company of New York City radio station WNEW-FM, on which the "Opie and Anthony" show aired a segment featuring a couple having sex at a local cathedral. But dissenting FCC commissioner Michael Copps—who voted to revoke the company’s licenses over the incident—isn't impressed. "Infinity/Viacom could pay this entire fine by taking just one more commercial onto one of its prime-time TV shows," he said. "Unless the FCC takes these cases seriously ... stations will know that they don’t have to take the law seriously." [Associated Press, 10/3/03]

Another recent FCC ruling isn’t likely to make Copps (or families) any happier. The agency has determined that U2 frontman Bono’s "fleeting and isolated" use of the f-word during this year's Golden Globes did not violate indecency standards. Why not? "The word ‘f---ing’ may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented [at the Golden Globes], did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities," the FCC concluded. "[Instead, it was merely] an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation." The ramifications of this pronouncement are bound to be dramatic, of course, as envelope-pushing TV producers such as Steven Bochco, Jerry Bruckheimer and David E. Kelley rush to include such "decent" obscenities in their prime-time series. [Hollywood Reporter, 10/7/03]

A British magician’s stunt broadcast in the U.K. has authorities worried that it might spawn fatal copycats. "Psychological illusionist" Derren Brown attracted 3 million television viewers when he played an onscreen game of Russian roulette. Chief superintendent of South Yorkshire Police Rick Naylor is blasting the trick. "It sends entirely the wrong message," he said. "You’re going to get copycat kids doing this and we’re possibly going to end up with some tragedies." (Unbeknownst to viewers, Brown’s gun was loaded with a blank.) Brown says the illusion was intended to show the dangers of firearms and made for "a terrific piece of television." [Reuters, 10/5/03; CNN.com, 10/8/03; London Daily Telegraph, 10/8/03 c&e:tv]

Sub sandwich giant Subway’s latest ad campaign is anything but "fresh." The new commercials use lines like "Subway, good so you don't always have to be" and "It's okay, I had Subway." The premise is that Subway customers can compensate for sometimes indecent or immoral behavior by eating Subway sandwiches. One spot includes scenes of a man washing his car while dressed like a female cheerleader, dancing to the '80s hit "Mickey." In others, a reserved executive aspires to be Lady Godiva, and a husband surprises his wife by disclosing an alter ego as a stripper. Competitor Quiznos, meanwhile, is running commercials that picture a man in a business suit suckling a wolf (an edited version shows him being licked by the canines). [New York Times, 9/22/03; Subway, 10/7/03]

On October 6, Vivendi Universal and General Electric signed a deal to combine GE's NBC with Universal Studios, forming a massive $43 billion media entity appropriately named NBC Universal. More than mere corporate reshuffling, the merger is significant because now every broadcast network is linked with a movie studio—the WB with Warner Bros.; ABC with Disney; UPN and CBS with Viacom's Paramount Pictures; and Fox with 20th Century Fox. [Reuters, 10/8/03]

QUOTE: "My kids love Friends. So when I can make it home by 8 o'clock on Thursdays, we order takeout Chinese food and watch as a family. Some things about the show have always bothered me, like the cast's lack of diversity (until Ross' latest love interest), and how these struggling young professionals can afford such big apartments in New York. (All the sexual innuendo used to concern me, but I decided to lighten up: children are exposed to a lot worse in rap lyrics and Internet spam.)" —Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker, eloquently expressing, from a personal perspective, the kind of relative reasoning that has allowed American entertainment to become more and more sexual, violent and profane, and that has soothed parents’ guilty consciences when they welcome prurient content into their homes [Newsweek, 10/6/03]

QUOTE: "American children, I’m afraid, are addicted to television." —First Lady Laura Bush [Guardian Unlimited, 9/30/03]

QUOTE: "If you don’t get the clothes off fast or the gun out quick, you’re in trouble. Audiences want to feel something intense, quickly, without wasting a lot of time." —director/producer Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, The Firm, Tootsie), describing the lamentable outcome of the film industry’s need to appeal to audiences’ short attention spans and make lots of money [Yahoo! News, 10/7/03]

QUOTE: "Clive [Davis] tried to tell me that saying certain words in a song—or as he says, ‘putting some balls into it’—isn’t bad, it’s just strong emotion. Well, there are certain words and emotions I don’t want kids hearing, and I’m not changing because they think it’s going to sell better. This is going to sound horrible, but I got 12 million votes doing what I did." —American Idol finalist Clay Aiken, describing pressure he got from RCA to "edge-up" his songs to boost sales [Time, 10/5/03]

A 29-year-old man was stabbed to death at the Oct. 4 Ludacris/Snoop Dogg concert in San Bernardino, Calif. No arrests have been made. [EW.com, 10/8/03; MTV.com, 10/6/03]

Gangsta wannabes and other negative attention seekers can up their street cred by buying the latest in bumper sticker cool: fake bullet holes. Online and at stores such as Spencer Gifts, magnetic and stick-on versions featuring bullet-pierced car armor or shattered windshield designs in .22-, .38- and .50-caliber varieties are available. "Ever since The Fast and the Furious came out, we've been selling a ton of this stuff," says Spencer Gifts store manager Heather Walker. [Calgary Herald, 9/24/03; Colorado Springs Gazette, 9/30/03]

If undergrads want to get a drunken bender on, then the University of Colorado is the place to be, says Princeton Review’s "The Best 351 Colleges" survey. It named CU the top party school in the nation, followed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Almost 63% of CU’s students binge drink (well above the national percentage of 44 proffered by a recent Harvard study). The school also ranked number one among institutions where students report they study the least. [Associated Press, 8/18/03; PrincetonReview.com, 9/5/03 drugs/stats]

QUOTE: "It’s not just the advertising dollars. It’s the 5-cent and 25-cent beers, it’s the extra pitcher of beer for a penny, it’s the $5 refillable cup. It’s not simply that these things make people drink, but that they make people drink much more." —Henry Wechsler, lead researcher and director of Harvard’s college alcohol studies program, on how campus-area marketing affects binge-drinking. Harvard researchers visited 830 bars, restaurants and nightclubs, as well as 1,684 liquor stores and other alcohol retailers near 118 campuses. They found high rates of binge-drinking on campuses surrounded by large numbers of aggressive alcohol outlets [USA Today, 9/15/03 c&e/drugs]

Synthetic party drugs like Ecstasy and amphetamines have surpassed heroin and cocaine as the fastest-growing global narcotics menaces. In a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 40 million people worldwide are estimated to have taken synthetic drugs in the past year, more than the combined number of cocaine and heroin users. The U.N. blames organized crime groups for flooding the market with party drugs to the tune of $65 billion a year (profit margins range upwards of 3,000%). "The problem is that few people die from using synthetic drugs. There are no scary headlines of people dying of overdoses. Instead, there is a slow mental deterioration—danger by stealth," warns the organization’s executive director Antonio Maria Costa. [Reuters, 9/23/03]