I’d say to be censorship, the concern about the immoral content has to come from the censoring person or authority. So that case wouldn’t be censorship. But again, I read the OP as claiming the head of the affiliate was taking the show out of the line-up due to his own moral concerns, which would be what I think of as censorship.
This is completely a red herring. KSL doesn’t care about local advertising. They are doing this because they are owned by the Mormon Church and they don’t like gays. End of story. They do this every few years (refuse to air a network show) probably to placate the more reactionary Mormons who get the vapors when they realize a church-owned TV station is showing FILTH! I believe this is the first time it’s about a gay-themed show; usually it’s something mildly risqué.
Back in 1977, when the series Soap began on ABC, our local station refused to run it on similar “moral” and “offensive” grounds (OMG, it’s teh gays!). That lasted three or four episodes, I think. Then the station owners realized the show was drawing ratings, it was going to stick around a while, so they might as well run the programming of the network they chose to be affiliated with.
Around that same time, there were at least two TV movies on ABC that the same station refused to air. I have no memory of which movies they were or what caused the station owners to have vapors about them, but I do remember something about the films the station ran in their place. One was some Korean War air combat movie, and the other was “Pillow Talk.” Yep … good, clean, all-American truth and morality, brought to you by that noted “non-gay” Rock Hudson!
This.
I’m not Mormon, and while I agree with you to some degree, I’ve become cynical enough over broadcast media programming to believe that it’s never 100% about morality. Bonneville exists to make money for the Church, and if that revenue stream is threatened for whatever reason, they’re going to do something about it and make a bit of noise doing it.
Ah, that’s where you’re wrong though. Bonneville exists NOT to make money, but to project influence. The Mormons would be happy pumping millions of dollars into Bonneville as long as they got to own their own television station. KSL currently doesn’t air Saturday Night Live. Do you think local advertisers are scandalized by SNL but happy to advertise on a rival network during Glee? No, KSL’s haphazard “standards” have nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with who owns it.
The Mormon church has more money than it knows what to do with. There will always be a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, even if every other local daily goes belly up. Owning media outlets is both a prestige factor and a wise way to control the message to the public. Money is no object.
It’s not simply about morality and money does make a difference, but in this case, they won’t gain enough extra revenue from the additional non-Mormons watching the show to offset the number of Mormons who claim they aren’t watching the show. I would guess that most of the local commercials are from Mormon owned businesses or businesses which are appealing to Mormons, so there isn’t a great deal of pressure to
A number of years back, the now defunct Mormon owned newspaper gave up it’s long standing policy of not running ads for R-rated movies, and there was a flap over it for a bit, but it went on.
However, there just isn’t going to be any pressure to get the church to reverse the policy. The Mormon church dislike gays and it would have to take a lot more than just a little money to change this.
Out of curiosity, does KSL endorse candidates for public office?
No. I would assume there’s some federal regulation about that.
The church-owned newspaper doesn’t endorse candidates either.
Cite: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765573753/Editorial-Room-for-debate.html?pg=all
Church-owned institutions can get in a lot of trouble for directly endorsing candidates for public office. They can lose their 501©(3) status for tax-deductible donations, since donations to political campaigns are not tax deductible.
Yes, that’s why I asked. I know churches don’t (at least not explicitly), but local news outlets do, so I wondered.
So far as I know, FCC regulations prohibit non-commercial, educational broadcasters (that is, public TV and radio) from endorsing candidates, but there is no such limitation on commercial broadcasters.
It’s not the FCC, it’s the IRS.
They can get a member into the White House the same way they get members into everyone else’s house.
<knock knock>
"“We represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’re sharing a message for all faiths.”