SpeakSpeak News

The PTC PR parade has marched through Fresno, CA.

As they did in Florida last week, the PTC has announced the appointment of a chapter president in the conservative Central Valley city.

The resulting newspaper report is – we’re used to this by now – glowing. (Search through the piece for a non-PTC opinion. Go on. I dare you.)

Pastor Harry Davies of the Family Home Church is one member who would like to “clean up the airwaves and get rid of a lot of the trash we have to put up with. In general, our society, religiously, is going bankrupt,” he said. “Our morals are going lower and lower, and these generations coming up think nothing of sex.”

Anywho, Mike Burton, Fresno chapter president, reports that his goals include taking on Marriott hotels to “stop them from offering pay-per-view pornography,” and taking on “local TV networks in an effort to halt mature-rated advertisements during prime time.” The PTC will also staff a booth at the local farmers’ market.

You know what to do. Speak up! Let the Clovis Independent know that the PTC doesn’t speak for you.

Once you’ve sent your letter, please consider posting it on our site for others to read.

A California man has petitioned the federal govermnet to rename the Bay Area’s Mt. Diablo. (For those with rusty Spanish skills, “diablo” translates to “devil.") (And for those with rusty English skills, “Mt.” translates to “mountain.")

The name, he says, is offensive to his personal religious sensibilities.

“Words have power, and when you start mentioning words that come from the dark side, evil thrives,” Mijares told the Contra Costa Times. “When I take boys camping on the mountain, I don’t even like to say its name. I have to explain what the name means. Why should we have a main feature of our community that celebrates the devil?”

Religious Man Wants to Rename Mt. Diablo, SF Chronicle.

Summoning Elmer “You’ll Burn In Hell!” Gantry, TV Week explores the Right’s religious mandate to save us all from TV.

Welcome to 21st century America, where a thin majority of narrow-minded Elmer Gantrys are determined to act as though they have some great mandate to impose their last-century ideology and old-fashioned point of view on the rest of us for our own good, even if it is anything but good for us.

In other words, at a time when there is crime in the streets, crime in corporate America and criminal pollution in our environment and we are being robbed at the gas pump, you, Mr. Broadcaster, may face time in the slammer because somebody flashed an inappropriate body part or pitched an F-bomb on your air, probably without any foreknowledge on your part and almost certainly without your permission.

At TV Week, via CCVM.

Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders, author of the Stamp Out Censorship Act, has criticized President Bush for supporting (or appearing to support, and then changing his mind) indecency regulations for cable and satellite.

Read his statement at Common Dreams.

According to Slate writer and smut fan Dana Stevens, the PTC has hidden its “Worst Clip of the Week” feature in the nether regions of its website. The worst clip, you may recall, used to be prominently featured on the PTC’s front page. (One reporter relayed to me a conversation in which he asked a PTC spokesperson about the inherent irony, or hypocrisy, in the availability of the video clips. The PTC’s response: “Children don’t visit our site.")

Slate’s Stevens asks her readers to write the PTC and ask them to bring back this popular feature.

Reminiscent of a proposed Texas law that would outlaw ’sexy’ cheerleading, the Washington Times reports on the growing popularity of Christian cheerleading camps.

Says one cheerleading coach of the Fellowship of Christian Cheerleaders (the other FCC): “It’s not dorky. It’s not ’80s cheerleading. They just take out the gross stuff.”

In addition to cleaner music and dancing, there’s also a stronger focus on good sportsmanship at Christian camps, coaches said. Tracey’s coach, Vicki Howell, said the growth of competitive cheerleading has led to more taunting and off-color cheers.

When her squad placed eighth at a recent competition, but won CCA’s Spirit of Competition Award for good sportsmanship, she remembers telling her girls, “That’s the only trophy you’ll take into heaven with you.”

Give me a G!

From the Washington Times.

After it was first reported that the Disney company (owner of ABC, ESPN, and other Mickey Mouse channels) supported the extension of indecency regulations to cable, Disney then backtracked and claimed it said no such thing.

Now it has said just that, sort of.

From Multichannel News:

If Congress passed a cable-indecency law, would The Walt Disney Co hire lawyers to fight the government or the cable industry?

“I can’t predict what’s going to happen in court,” said Preston Padden, Disney’s executive vice president of worldwide government relations.

Padden’s cautious guidance was telling — and another sign that in the ongoing indecency battle here, Disney is going its own way: If necessary to inject some fairness in the law, Disney would not object to indecency regulation of cable’s expanded-basic tier.

“We think whatever the law is in the area, it should treat broadcast and cable the same,” he said.

[…]

Disney’s approach to the indecency issue is somewhat nuanced. At the outset, Padden said he did not “wake up in the morning wishing we could get any channels regulated in terms of indecency.”

In fact, Disney prefers no indecency regulation, for cable or broadcasting. But from Disney’s perspective, the idea that cable remains immune from any regulation while the broadcast indecency vise is tightening is intolerable when today the vast majority of TV households subscribe to cable or satellite.

[…]

“We’re just asking for some logic to be applied,” Iger said. “We believe that if there are going to be rules — which we do oppose, by the way — they should be applied basically across the board to broadcast and to cable.”

More at Multichannel News.

The National Association of Broadcasters will hold its annual conference in Sin City this week. Indecency and its regulation will be one of the prime topics, although FCC chair Kevin Martin canceled his appearance at the last minute because of the death of his father.

Participants will be holding a “town hall” style meeting on indecency on Tuesday morning.

More at the Houston Chronicle.