PTC Pushes Congress, FCC for Less Pixelated Flesh

Tells Hill to urge FCC to clear out backlog of indecency complaints

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/20/2012 10:55:29 AM

The Parents Television Council is sending letters to the Hill complaining about pixelated nudity in primetime TV and asking legislators to pressure the FCC to clear out its backlog of indecency complaints, now totaling over 1.5 million, according to the group.

PTC says it is not asking for more laws, just more restraint from industry and more action from the FCC on pending complaints.

Last month, the Supreme Court signaled that the FCC could enforce its fleeting indecency policy so long as broadcasters had sufficient notice, which the Chief Justice suggested the FCC had now provided.

PTC is complaining that the incidents of pixelated nudity have dramatically increased in recently seasons, and that they have gone from strategically-placed items and black parts to the pixelated approach that it says providers "the full body of flesh tones depicted during full-body nudity scenes where sexual organs are blurred or pixelated," which PTC says is more explicit because it "could be perceived to be a closer simulation of complete frontal nudity given that the viewer is seeing all flesh tones."

An FCC spokesman was unavailable for comment at presstime on how the FCC was working through that backlog of complaints and whether it would be seeking comment on how to proceed.