Barely Legal
WZTV stuns Nashville with steamy Sunday sex
By Steve McClellan -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/8/2004
Millions may have glimpsed Janet Jackson's famously overexposed breast, but there were some who saw a whole lot more of Hilary Swank four weeks later.
The real hot TV action was in Nashville on Feb. 29, where WZTV treated a select few to a Quiet Days in Hollywood, starring Oscar winner Hilary Swank as a character named Lolita, who would do Nabokov proud. In the 1997 film, the now A-list actress struts her B-movie full-frontal stuff and purrs, "If you want to f*** some more, you can come in here." Needless to say, she's taken up on her offer—repeatedly.
The Sinclair-owned station apparently aired an unedited, or minimally edited, version of the film.
At noon. On a Sunday.
Now raising holy hell about it is Nashville City Councilman Jason Alexander.
FCC chief Michael Powell doesn't know about it yet, but he soon will. Alexander filed a formal complaint with the FCC last week. The FCC says it is looking into the matter.
Sinclair general counsel Barry Faber confesses it was "human error, and we're sorry." (Most of Nashville missed it, however. Only about 8,000 tuned in.)
The snafu is, in retrospect, easy to explain: Many stations no longer screen films or programs before airing. They assume that program distributors-networks and syndicators—cut the shows for commercials and edit them to meet broadcast standards. But Quiet Days was independently made. The neophyte distributor didn't know about that editing bit.
"Years ago, most stations had film editors, but not today," says a station veteran. "This could force stations to take greater steps to prescreen content, since they are the ones the FCC will fine for indecency."
Councilman Alexander got one thing he wanted: The station said it "sincerely apologizes" for showing the movie. Not content with mere words, Alexander is gunning for a fine as well.
A contrite Faber notes that in the wake of the Super Bowl fiasco, Sinclair scheduled a series of meetings to ensure proper procedures are in place to prevent similar mistakes. From now on, attendance will probably be mandatory.
