at least according to a Freedom of Information Act-obtained
Tim Doyle, a consultant with SNL Kagan. (That firm has the domain name SNL.com, in case you wanted to find the official website of
Saturday Night Live, which is really www.nbc.com/snl. :rofl:)
Doyle found 30 various programs/even commercials for which viewers complained to the FCC about possible indecency, up to Dec. 31, 2009. The top offender? Jack Cafferty's commentary segment on CNN's
The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, with a whopping 2,273 complaints!
MTV appears twice on the list for its 2008 Video Music Awards and 2009 Movie Awards, both of which got "
Worst Cable Content of the Week" reviews from the Parents Television Council, an organization that supports increased governmental oversight on TV indecency (and cable choice too, a pretty good thing compared to the non-stop PTC complaint bot). Ditto with the 2009 BET Awards, FX's original dramas
Dirt and
Nip/Tuck, and TNT's
Saving Grace. PTC called out those programs and said: "You're subsidizing immorality with your cable bill!"
Fox News appears 4 times: for 3 editions of Glenn Beck's self-titled program and once for Bill O'Reilly's
O'Reilly Factor. (For some reason, the Fox network's New Year's Eve coverage is included as #3 on the list, even though Fox is a broadcast not cable channel, and the New Year's coverage is normally 10PM or later.) MSNBC appears 5 times all over the list: mostly for the use of "teabagging" on shows like Rachel Maddow's and the incident where Joe Scarborough said "
fuck you" on the air. The
August 11, 2009 edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews generated 36 complaints.
And then there are complaints for overtly sleazy commercials like for Girls Gone Wild on Spike and Comedy Central, commercials for clothing brands Bluefly and Levi's, and one for the male enhancement product Extenze.
Overall, this is a really interesting and diverse list, though it seems that the Parents Television Council and other right-wingers seem to have filed most of these. I found this b/w/o the LA Times blog
Fox's `Family Guy' raking in the indecency complaints.