If a TV station broadcast a daytime TV show containing violence, racism, and a female nipple - which aspect would they get in the most legal trouble for?
I’m neither a lawyer nor an American (I assume we’re talking about America here), but my reading and experience would suggest that the first is glorified, the second is tolerated, and the third can result in hundreds of millions of dollars of fines even if it’s a fraction of a second by accident (eg the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show being a particularly well-publicised incident. The $550,000 fine was eventually dismissed, but only because “it’s unfair to apply this rule retroactively”, not because there’s anything wrong with the rule...)
- nipple: becoming more accepted, barring antiquated FCC rules that only really impact things like Superbowl. streaming seems to completely allow it.
- dirty words (f-bomb, s-bomb, etc.): roughly same as nipple. Yippie kie-yay Mister Falcon.
- racism: depictions of historical racism, e.g. History Channel are fine. racial slurs, racialized depictions (Apu on Simpsons) risk randomly getting episodes or entire series effectively banned (delisted and never shown again). applies to actors' and producers' personal lives, twitter feeds, etc.
- sexism, other-isms: racism-lite. there is a bigger emphasis on sexism in personal lives vs. racism in the actual show content. Seinfeld wasn't cancelled over Michael Richard's Laugh Factory incident and there are tons of sexist tropes on 80's/90's sitcoms that haven't haven't (yet) resulted in cancellation.
I’m neither a lawyer nor an American (I assume we’re talking about America here), but my reading and experience would suggest that the first is glorified, the second is tolerated, and the third can result in hundreds of millions of dollars of fines even if it’s a fraction of a second by accident (eg the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show being a particularly well-publicised incident. The $550,000 fine was eventually dismissed, but only because “it’s unfair to apply this rule retroactively”, not because there’s anything wrong with the rule...)