The Relevance of the FCC in Contemporary Media Culture

In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said he could not define pornography, but he famously observed, “I know it when I see it” (“Obscene, Indecent and Profane Broadcasts”). While Stewart was not discussing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, his statement illustrates the fluidity of the terms used to describe “unwanted” content in ways that still impact content regulation, despite the changing landscape of what constitutes television. The FCC originally crafted its indecency regulations in a time of media scarcity, which limited the amount of material broadcast and allowed networks to gatekeep content more easily, even though such content would be protected by the First Amendment in other contexts. The commission feared that lewd or coarse content would intrude on the home and create damaging effects on the developing minds of children (Perlman; Chris; Lipschultz; Fontenot and Martínez). However, the scarcity that characterized early broadcast television is no longer a factor in consumers’ viewing habits. In the present era, the choices are many, whether viewers want child-friendly shows or content created for mature audiences. Creators of most media content have freer rein than their broadcast forebears to craft shows however they want, whether the narratives involve nudity, sex, violence, or drug use, because federal regulation is limited, and content on most platforms is no longer affected by concerns about the FCC. It is a paradox that the FCC remains a critical institution for oversight of the communication industries even though it has been largely stripped of its ability to act in the public interest because of new technology and viewing platforms.The expansion of channels and content heralded by the communication revolutions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has only strengthened protests about media content that some groups would like to restrict. Organizations such as the Parents Television and Media Council (PTC) cry out for a firmer hand on sexual content, profanity, and violence on all platforms for fear that indecent and profane content will shape the public in its image (“Mission and Vision”). In 2023, the Heritage Foundation published The Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (also known as Project 2025). This 920-page book outlines the ways in which a conservative sweep of the executive and legislative branches in 2025 could reshape the role of the federal government in Americans’ everyday lives. The book's introduction, which states that “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries” (Dans and Groves 1), illustrates that interest in protecting children from what conservative thinkers deem indecent continues.Allison Perlman points out that criticisms of media content, such as those made by the PTC, reflect not the singular public interest of a diverse democratic society but instead one constituency's interests in utilizing the power of the state to reshape the way television and radio broadcasting operate. She writes that groups such as the PTC and the Heritage Foundation use their advocacy to assert an “archetypal definition of the ‘family,’ defined in opposition to the prime-time content in which it was derided or attacked” (Perlman 124). Cynthia Chris explains that these voices “are taking new forms in the early twenty-first century in response to continuously changing conditions in the TV industry that affect how, when, why, if, and even where we watch TV, not to mention our expectations of the medium when we do watch it” (4). As James Poniewozik suggests, media fragmentation facilitates hyperpartisanship and makes its advocates see Project 2025 as necessary.The limits that groups such as the PTC seek, and that Project 2025 promises, should worry free-speech advocates from a purely legal perspective. Moreover, the underlying benefits of free speech are also important, particularly when considering that such content has aided young people by providing them with concepts and vocabulary to understand identity, history, and sexuality (Fathallah 1322; Webber 61). Since the 1970s, content creators have highlighted the inconsistency of ideology-driven regulation and have responded in ways that show their dissatisfaction with how the US government and vocal constituencies stifle creativity and the ability to tell stories in a way that suits a show's message.Beyond media producers, many people do not understand the FCC's governmental remit or history. As a result, they might see Project 2025 plans for the government as common-sense, rather than as a radical departure from the norm. One piece of Project 2025’s agenda is related to “Schedule F,” which was established in October 2020 by an executive order in the first Trump administration, revoked in January 2021 by the Biden administration, and then reinstated in January 2025 by the second Trump administration. This executive order affects thousands of nonpartisan, career government employees who can now be replaced for partisan reasons, creating an atmosphere in which civil servants must follow an administration's mandates (Tausanovitch et al.). Significantly, Schedule F's reinstatement in 2025 ended the long-standing neutrality of the FCC's screening complaint process. As of March 2025, additional developments promise to affect television content regulation in the United States. For example, Project 2025 argues that the president should have the ability to revoke the broadcast licenses of network affiliates that the president sees as reporting negatively on the administration. Moreover, Trump has filed lawsuits against news organizations and threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of stations that have aired critical coverage of him (Shepardson).Television's role as a site of ideological contestation can be illustrated by placing the battle over FCC regulations into a larger context. Using FCC documents, court decisions, essays by television scholars, mainstream media coverage of the industry, and the FCC's own website, this article considers whether the FCC remains pertinent in contemporary streaming and non-broadcast entertainment culture and details how the FCC is bounded in its power. In addition, this article shows how the FCC's confusing and outdated regulations affect the modern television industry; broadcasters’ responses to regulations illustrate their attempts to define what they are allowed to show on air and how they fight back against an agency that has become irrelevant to most television producers. In-house Standards and Practices (S&P) departments for non-broadcast companies do not have federal backing, but they continue to demand a certain sanitized product from their producers. 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