p2pnet news view Advertising | TV:- Janet Jackson’s left nipple should be enshrined as a valuable US resource.

Or was it her right one?

Either way, her, “magically, awesomely, mesmerizingly powerful nipple” was “revealed for less than one second to millions of half-drunk spectators on a Sunday afternoon in 2004,” Mark Frauenfelder reminds us on Boingboing.

Now, it’s a, “five-year-long absurdist theater performance” costing, “Millions of dollars and rising,” he says, going on »»»

Starring: the FCC, the highest court in the United States, major media companies, and a cast of thousands of lawyers.

Script: A 12-foot-high stack incomprehensible legal documents.

I hope the show never ends. Bravo!

A couple of years ago, “a Super Bowl half-time farce featured Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction,’ as it’s come to be known, and 20 CBS-owned TV stations were hit with the maximum indecency penalty of $27,500 for a total of $550,000, the largest fine ever imposed a TV broadcaster,” said p2pnet.

CBS challenged the $550,000 fine levied against it by the Federal Communications Commission. The “fleeting, isolated or unintended” images shouldn’t automatically have been considered indecen, said the Hollywood Reporter.

With that in mind, p2pnet wondered if  the Vanessa Hudgens incident should similarly be cited considering the 18-year-old Hollywood children’s star went a whole lot further than Jackson, and no one seemed to mind.

“Hudgens revealed not merely her left breast, but her all. And there was nothing fleeting about it,” we said, adding, “But her exposure was online, not at the Super Bowl …”

Now, “The FCC has reasserted its power to regulate fleeting nudity and says it wants to further investigate ‘whether CBS’ indecency violation [in the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl reveal] was willful’,” says Broadcasting & Cable, continuing

‘The evidence in this case strongly suggests that CBS had access to video delay technology at the time of the 2004 Super Bowl,’ the commission said Tuesday in a brief to the Third Circuit Appeals Court in the Janet Jackson Super Bowl reveal case. The FCC asked the court to remand the decision back to the FCC so it could investigate further its assertion that the violation was ‘willful.’

The Third Circuit, in reversing the FCC’s fine against the broadcast, said the evidence that delay technology was available at the time was ’scant.’ The FCC disagrees and wants the chance to determine ‘whether CBS was reckless not to use video delay technology for this broadcast.’

The commission also reasserted that the reveal was off limits for broadcast TV between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. ‘[The FCC] reasonably determined in this case that the graphic and shocking, albeit brief, exposure of Janet Jackson’s bare right breast to a nationwide audience composed of millions of children and adults was indecent,’ the FCC said.

Back in June, the court asked for new briefs in the case after the Supreme Court’s May 4 decision to vacate the Third Circuit’s ruling that the Jackson fine was arbitrary and capricious.

“The FCC relied  heavily on the Fox decision in its brief, saying that ‘as the Fox Courts interpretation of the pertinent regulatory history now makes clear, the  repetition requirement that exempted fleeting expletives from enforcement has  no logical application to images’,” B&C adds.

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p2pnet – Jackson vs Hudgens: $550,000 difference, September 11, 2009
Boingboing – The US Government’s bizarre obsession with Janet Jackson’s nipple, September 16, 2009
half-time farce – Janet Jackson’s mammary memory, November 9, 2004
Hollywood Reporter – Court hears FCC, CBS on indecency case, September 12, 2007
not merely her left breast – Disney forgives Hudgens’ nude lapse, September 12, 2007
Broadcasting & Cable – FCC To Further Investigate Janet Jackson Super Bowl Reveal, September 16, 2009

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Advertising, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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