When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

Although stations didn’t fear revoked licenses as much anymore, the Reagan-era FCC couldn’t abandon all its regulatory responsibilities. It still had its mandate to punish indecency and obscenity on the air, and the presence of the religious right in the Reagan coalition meant that there was significant pressure to flex that muscle. The National Federation for Decency, founded by the United Methodist minister Donald Wildmon, began to picket the FCC’s offices in 1986, calling for a crackdown on indecent TV and radio. Fowler, although he said he was “sympathetic” to the protesters, issued a circumspect bureaucratic reply: “In view of the fact that a critical legal element in assessing material alleged to be ‘obscene’ is whether it violates ‘local community standards,’ it is more appropriate that such allegations be referred to local prosecutors, including U.S. attorneys, for potential adjudication. If a local jury makes a finding of ‘obscenity’ against an FCC licensee, it will then take appropriate action, including a possible stripping of the license.”