It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It
is also a violation of federal law to broadcast indecent or profane
programming during certain hours.
(See definitions).
Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the
responsibility for administratively enforcing the law that governs these
types of broadcasts. The FCC has authority to issue civil monetary
penalties, revoke a license or deny a renewal application. In addition,
violators of the law, if convicted in a federal district court, are subject
to criminal fines and/or imprisonment for not more than two years.
The FCC vigorously enforces this law where we find violations. The
Commission has also toughened its enforcement penalties by proposing
monetary penalties based on each indecent utterance in a broadcast, rather
than proposing a single monetary penalty for the entire broadcast.
At the same time, however, the Commission is careful of First Amendment
protections and the prohibitions on censorship and interference with
broadcasters' freedom of speech. The FCC has denied complaints in cases in
which we determined the broadcast was not indecent based on the overall
context of the programming.
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