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FCC REJECTS BLUE APPEAL
Wednesday, February 20 2008
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Rejecting their appeal, the FCC ordered some 40 ABC affiliates to pay fines of $27,500 apiece by Thursday for airing a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue in which an actress's bare backside was shown. It canceled fines for about 12 other stations because of legal technicalities. The commission ruled that "the depiction of an adult woman's naked buttocks was sufficiently graphic and explicit to support an indecency finding." It added that the scene was "patently offensive under contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, notwithstanding any artistic or social merit and the presence of a parental advisory and rating. Therefore, it is actionably indecent." Responding to ABC's claim that a naked buttocks was not a sexual or excretory organ, the commission said that if the network's argument won out, "the airwaves could be filled with naked buttocks and breasts during daytime and prime time hours because they would be outside the scope of indecency regulation."
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