Wright further argues that, with the rise of media technology -- and the potential absorption of minors in the staggering media choices of 100 cable channels, TiVo recorders, video-on-demand services and DVDs -- why should broadcast networks be saddled with any expectations of community standards, like a "family hour"?
Children watch more cable, he says, and "spend time on the Internet with unlimited access to material of every description." This is really the 60-something CEO arguing with all the sophistication of a spoiled 10-year-old child: "Why do I have to do the chores? No other kid on the block is doing chores!"
More precisely, he is arguing that broadcast TV, as the oldest technology, is being discriminated against. In his Journal screed, he tries to use mathematics to underline the pointlessness of the parents-decency movement. FCC fines are "doomed to failure" since 85 percent of households have cable or satellite TV, and two-thirds of the households who get broadcast TV only have no children in the house. Thus, the FCC is "basing its actions on a policy that is relevant to 5 percent of households."
What kind of an argument is this? People with cable access don't care about broadcast-TV indecency? People who don't have children in the house (grandparents, uncles and aunts, priests) don't care about indecency?
But he's playing with numbers, so let's reply with the same. Bob Wright's empire at NBC/Universal includes full or partial ownership of 18 -- yes, 18 -- different networks. That means they have the ability to put out 432 hours of programming daily. Total number of hours regulated by the FCC? Ready? Sixteen hours. Only 3.7 percent of Wright's programming is under the FCC's purview, yet he can't even bend a muscle to be a nice "community-based provider of programming" on less than 4 percent of his airtime.
Wright devotes hundreds of words to the denunciation of the FCC and a dismissal of anyone who cares about decency on the public airwaves, but he never gets to the point. What Wright is presently lobbying for in legal briefs and government halls is simply the "right" to drop the F-bomb or the S-word on national television, at any time, anywhere, in front of anyone. He's lobbying for a large weekly oil spill to be spread across the cultural landscape.
If I were Robert Wright, I'd make it a point not to get to the point, either.