Seven Dirty Words - Pay Television

Pay Television

The FCC obscenity guidelines have never been applied to non-broadcast media such as cable television or satellite radio. It is widely held that the FCC's authorizing legislation (particularly the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996) does not enable the FCC to regulate content on subscription-based services, which include cable television, satellite television, and pay-per-view television. Whether the FCC or the Department of Justice could be empowered by the Congress to restrict indecent content on cable television without such legislation violating the Constitution has never been settled by a court of law. Since cable television must be subscribed to in order to receive it legally, it has long been thought that since subscribers who object to the content being delivered may cancel their subscription, an incentive is created for the cable operators to self-regulate (unlike broadcast television, cable television is not legally considered to be "pervasive", nor does it depend on a scarce, government-allocated electromagnetic spectrum; as such, neither of the arguments buttressing the case for broadcast regulation particularly apply to cable television).

Self-regulation by many basic cable networks is undertaken by Standards & Practices (S&P) departments that self-censor their programming because of the pressure put on them by advertisers — also meaning that any basic cable network willing to ignore such pressure could use any of the Seven Dirty Words.

In recent years, all of the words on Carlin's list have come into common usage in many made-for-cable series and film productions, such as Dexter, Deadwood, The Wire, The Shield, The Sopranos, Weeds, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, The Inbetweeners, Skins, Dead Like Me, South Park, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, Breaking Bad and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.