Your government in action! The Federal Communications Commission is threatining to fine WPIX, New York’s WB affiliate, for exceeding the federally-mandated limits of advertising during children’s programming by showing a commercial for Nintendo’s Game Boy e-Reader accessory featuring Pokémon characters during the Pokémon television show on five seperate occasions. Never mind the fact that no Pokémon characters actually appeared in the advertisement, only the word “mon” on a covered-up card for only a second, the commercial in question aired in 2002, and the WB network hasn’t existed since 2006. The FCC believes that the one-second “mon” is enough, and that the instance falls under illegal “host-selling,” where a character from a TV show appears during a commercial aired during that same show. Young children, who can’t differentiate between commercials and TV shows, may see the commercial and believe it is part of the show and that the character is asking them to buy the product. In its complaint, the FCC states that host-selling in effect turns a TV show into a “program-length commercial.” But isn’t Pokémon a program-length commercial already?
The Kids’ WB isn’t actually gone. It’s still the Saturday morning kids’ block on the CW and is referred to as such. So I guess the FCC can still go after the CW for content previously aired on the WB if the name is still in use.
I agree that the FCC has been pulling some serious shit lately, but there does need to be some sort of basic regulatory body. Otherwise, what’s to stop me from being a dick and jamming all the local stations?
Yes, we need the FCC or something like it to regulate the technical aspects of broadcasting, but I don’t believe in any kind of official regulation of programming content. If people don’t like what’s on, they shouldn’t watch. If they don’t want their kids seeing certain things, they should try being actual parents and monitor their kids’ viewing, and raise kids who can make good value judgments about the ideas they will inevitably be exposed to in the process of living life. If you feel like that’s too much trouble, please refrain from reproducing. Censorship isn’t the answer to an epidemic of crappy parenting.
You mean like the country station broadcasting from 92.x that jammed the college radio station 90.x in Orlando? Like they prevented the CB’er who lived next door to me from jamming literally all of the speakers in my house? Yeah, they do top-notch regulatory work :rolleyes:.
The second one, yes. They said it was out of their jurisdiction, supposedly. The first one, I emailed the station twice and never got a response but I moved closer to the college radio station before I notified the FCC
That’s surprising. I remember when they used to come down hard on CB radios and other home transmitters that were too powerful. Guess it wasn’t a priority for them - too bad.
…years ago I saw the original Sailor Moon series as taped off Japanese TV. During the commercial break*, there would be commercials for Sailor Moon merchandise. I actually thought that was a common sense approach to marketing. Maybe the FCC finds it too effective.
Is this a new regulation? I could have sworn back in the 80s that Transformers and GI Joe commercials were being aired during their respective TV episode showtimes.
Found it amusing that in Godzillaland, most half-hour TV shows have one, and ONLY one commercial break. What’s annoying, though, is that 1) the same commercials gets repeated much more than in the U.S., and 2) often you’ll see two fifteen-second commericals for the same product air one right after another. The fifteen-second commercials are usually more in-your-face (read: annoying) than the thirty-second ones.
When I was living south of UCF, WPRK…okay, I was wrong, it appears it’s 91.5 would come in, but the 92.x country station would play over it just as I was coming up from the high 90’s. I forget the name of the country station…i think it was K92.3 – a .8 difference should not be stompable. (And this was with a digital tuner.)