FCC's Copps Seeks Indecency Standard Overhaul
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top communications official on Thursday called for an overhaul of the government's broadcast indecency standard as hundreds of complaints flooded his office about the Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show that aired on prime-time television Wednesday night.

Michael Copps, one of five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, urged the agency to revise the definition of indecency and also look into whether it should be expanded to include obscene, violent and profane programming.

"The current definition of indecency to me should be capturing for enforcement purposes some of these programs and it is not," Copps told reporters during a briefing. "We are only having a paucity of enforcement actions against programming that is palpably and demonstrably indecent."

Copps said he did not watch the fashion show, which featured models strutting up and down a catwalk in high heels and lingerie as well as musical performances by Destiny's Child, Marc Anthony and Phil Collins.

Hosted by German supermodel Heidi Klum and singer Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, the program was telecast on Viacom Inc.'s CBS television network.

Federal indecency rules bar the broadcast of obscene material and limit the airing of indecent material that contains sexual or excretory references in a patently offensive manner.

"I am strongly of the opinion we ought to be considering excessive violence as part of that definition," he said. A revision is "sensitive, it's delicate, it's difficult to do that, but I think we need to do that."

Copps made the comments to reporters in his office. Behind him on his computer there were more than 300 e-mails from the public complaining about the lingerie fashion show. Some of the e-mails had subject lines that said: "When will this trash stop?" and "Victoria's Secret smut show."

Despite the controversy, the show proved a relative ratings dud, averaging about 10.5 million viewers to finish the 9 o'clock hour in third place behind its ABC and NBC rivals.

The CBS special was trounced by ABC's two-hour season finale of romance reality hit "The Bachelor," which averaged 24.1 million viewers during the 9 p.m. hour, and it trailed the 15 million tallied by NBC's political drama "The West Wing."

Victoria's Secret, a unit of Limited Brands Inc., spent $7 million to produce the highly-watched show.

Last year, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC television network aired the fashion show and had about 12.4 million viewers. The FCC received scores of complaints, but said they did not demonstrate the sexual aspects of the material was "so graphic or explicit as to be patently offensive."

A spokeswoman for CBS was not immediately available for comment.

Copps on Thursday also wondered if there was a link between the rise in what he described as more indecency in broadcasts and the consolidation in the media industry, or whether it was merely a "simple coincidence."

Separately, the commissioner, the lone Democrat on the commission, said he would go ahead with plans to hold public hearings on the agency's review of ownership limits in the media, even though the idea has not won support from FCC Chairman Michael Powell.

The FCC is reviewing limits on how much of the national television audience one entity should be allowed to reach; limits on local radio station concentration; and a ban on some common ownership of television and radio stations, or a television station and newspaper.

The agency hopes to have a proposal for the commissioners to review by the spring of 2003.

"I do not see how hearings would delay the process and it would make the process a lot more comfortable," Copps said who has said the agency seem.

He said he hoped other commissioners would join the hearings and added that the gatherings would likely begin in early 2003.
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