SNL and the Bleep-ing Internet
With the Democratic Congress just coming into session as well as the FCC’s AT&T merger decision last week, there has been endless editorializing on the prospects for Net Neutrality regulation this year. The rhetoric of those arguments aside, there are other elements of the internet with great potential to be regulated- namely content.
A few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live aired a skit called “Special Treat” on NBC. The skit contained some offensive language, which was bleeped for television. Shortly after the skit aired, an uncensored version was released on the internet- by SNL. The un-bleeped version quickly became one of the most popular videos on YouTube.
SNL’s viewership has been steadily declining for over a decade, and utilizing the web to increase the show’s popularity is beneficial for SNL itself as well as for NBC. But the show’s decision and the network’s permission to release an uncensored version of the skit online was a blatant slap in the face to the FCC and its regulation of television content.
I think there is a great future for networks who offer their content on the internet- although questions about ad revenue still abound. I personally don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy online every time I missed it at 9 on Thursday nights (yes, I’m the only person left without DVR). But I think that NBC’s move, and others’ that are sure to follow, to offer content online that couldn’t be aired on TV are just provoking the FCC and Congress to step in and regulate.
What do people in the Diner think?
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This blog makes me ponder the larger ideas of censorship and the internet. The United States has some of the most conservative content regulations for television and radio in the world bar none. In europe and elsewhere abroad material that would be considered “explicit” is regularly seen in advertisements, on television and elsewhere. This is not necessarily wrong more simply it is just a byproduct of americas conservative puritanical heritiage. The internet, however, is a place where information can truly pass freely. The global stage for the citizens of planet earth to say whatever it is they please be it negative things such as how to build bombs from household chemicals or positive things such as this blog. The free usage of “off-limit” or “curse” words is not the issue here. The issue is that to begin to regulate content on the internet because its origins were in televsion is the beginning of censorship on a much grander scale. The internet is a truly free forum for anything and everything quintessentially human from d*ck in the box jokes and other semi and more seriously profane things to pictures of Machu Pichu, orignal writings of Thomas Jefferson, free copies of books of all kinds from all cultures. The internet should not be censored for language. Will the state of Kentucky begin regulating internet access to sites describing the theory of evolution? In China and Iran extreme regulation the internet has become normal because the government is afraid of the power of the internet to force political change. Equating bleeping out dirty words to prosecuting opposition bloggers may seem a little exaggerated but nevertheless, this is not a path the United States wants to start down.
Doug, you make some great points and I hope our lawmakers do not go down that road. However, there will be an effort to regulate from some policymakers and those whose economic models are disrupted.