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Administrative Law Keyed to Asimow
Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc.
Citation:
567 U.S. 239 (2012)Facts
The FCC had historically distinguished between repeated utterances of expletives and isolated or fleeting expletives, generally not sanctioning the latter. In 2002 and 2003, Fox Television broadcast the Billboard Music Awards where celebrities (Cher and Nicole Richie) used unscripted expletives. In 2003, ABC aired an episode of NYPD Blue that showed a woman’s nude buttocks for approximately seven seconds. After these broadcasts occurred, but before taking enforcement action against Fox and ABC, the FCC changed its policy in its 2004 Golden Globes Order, declaring that even isolated or fleeting expletives could be actionably indecent. The FCC then applied this new standard retroactively to Fox’s and ABC’s broadcasts, finding them in violation. The FCC declined to impose a forfeiture on Fox but fined ABC and its affiliates nearly $1.24 million for the NYPD Blue episode.
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