An Institute You Can’t Disparage

Today in Tedium: The culture wars never really went away, but in an era when gun violence and online censorship are once again becoming hot topics in the news, now feels like a great time to discuss one of the greatest sources of controversy of the past 30 years—Married … With Children, an edge-busting TV sitcom that predated the Streisand Effect but may have been one of its earliest examples. And it all came about thanks to a Michigan homemaker with a few ties to a political dynasty. Today’s Tedium highlights the story of Terry Rakolta, the woman who tried, and failed, to kill Married … With Children. I was going to write about the Roseanne revival this week but I picked the wrong ’80s show. Sorry! — Ernie @ Tedium

(StockSnap/Pixabay)

The story of the Family Viewing Hour, the federal government’s failed attempt to neuter prime-time TV

To understand the nature of the complaints by Rakolta, we need to go back to the 1970s, when we had just three main commercial television networks, cable and satellite television had yet to take hold, and America’s interest in maintaining its “moral fabric” was just a little bit stronger overall.

Around 1974, a year in which we lost a president to political scandal, there was a major concern about the level of sex and violence that appeared on television, and that led the federal government and the television industry to freak out about the problem at the exact same time.

Outwardly, a major network blinked first. Per a 1975 New York Times article, CBS President Arthur Taylor sent a letter to the chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters’ Television Code Review Board at the tail end of 1974, expressing concern that not enough was being done to stem the constant stream of sex and violence streaming through TV screens.

“There seems to be a deep appetite among certain segments of the public for sadism and violence. We felt the time had come to do something about that,” Taylor recalled to the Times.

Taylor—whose network was home to the megahit All in the Family, the Married … With Children of its time—was stuck between a rock and a hard place with this stance. If he rescheduled Family, an 8 p.m. Saturday show, to a different time, there was no guarantee the other networks would follow suit, and he’d essentially be sacrificing his biggest hit out of a concern for morality that wasn’t shared by his peers.

NAB, however, effectively agreed with Taylor, and the other networks reluctantly followed suit. Also supportive was FCC Chairman Richard E. Wiley, who notably served under three presidents in just three and a half years—Nixon, Ford, and Carter.

But while Taylor’s concerns may have been valid, they didn’t come out of thin air. As discovered later, Wiley met with the network heads about a month before Taylor sent his letter and criticized the “undue violence” and “fairly explicit sexual material” on the airwaves.

While the network heads claimed that the meeting had no influence on their decision per the Times article, Wiley was most definitely ready to help—in fact, he was the one who gave voice to the idea of a family-friendly TV period, in response to pressure from Congress to come up with a list of actions designed to ensure kids didn’t see offensive material on TV.

Wiley suggested the idea of devoting the first hour of prime-time programming to family-friendly fare; the NAB did him one better, suggesting that local affiliates also devote the hour before prime-time. Soon enough, the TV networks and federal government were falling over one another to censor the airwaves for two hours every night.

By early February 1975, according to a 1979 legal document, the Television Code Review Board adopted this statement:

Additionally, entertainment programming inappropriate for viewing by a general family audience should not be broadcast during the first hour of network entertainment programming in prime time and in the immediately preceding hour. In the occasional case when an entertainment program in this time period is deemed to be inappropriate for such an audience, advisories should be used to alert viewers. Advisories should also be used when programs in later prime time periods contain material that might be disturbing to significant segments of the audience.

These advisories should be presented in the audio and video form at the beginning of the program and when deemed appropriate at a later point in the program. Advisories should also be used responsibly in the promotion material in advance of the program. When using an advisory, the broadcaster should attempt to notify publishers of television program listings.

So what was the problem with this idea? Simply, the creative folks, the people who actually wrote and produced the shows, didn’t feel like they had a say in any of this. Especially not into the idea was Norman Lear, the creator of All in the Family. The show’s reign as the top-ranked show on television eventually ended, in no small part, thanks to the fact that the Family Viewing Hour forced the show out of its longtime time slot.

“Basically the Family Viewing Hour is a deceit,” Lear told the Times. “It is not a sincere effort to curb excesses of any kind. If the networks were to make a sincere effort, it seems to me they would have called a series of meetings with the creative community to talk about excesses.”

(He also pointed out that kids are often awake after 9 p.m.)

Lear, with the support of the Writers’ Guild of America, West, and other artistic guilds, sued to stop the change. The legal battle laid hollow the networks’ case that the regulations were their idea. Instead, a federal court found that Wiley’s move to push the issue effectively turned the move into a de facto regulatory decision—which meant that the the move fell under the scrutiny of the First Amendment.

As a result, Federal Judge Warren J. Ferguson ruled in 1976 that Family Viewing Hour violated the First Amendment.

In his decision, he specifically criticized Wiley’s influence on the situation.

“Chairman Wiley's actions were the direct cause of the implementation of the family viewing policy: were it not for the pressure he exerted, it would not have been adopted by any of the networks nor by the NAB,” Ferguson stated in his opinion. “The threat of regulatory action was not only a substantial factor leading to its adoption but a crucial, necessary, and indispensable cause.”

As a result, all that sex and violence could remain on the air between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Reflecting on the ruling after the fact, Wiley wrote that his goal was merely to convince the television industry to self-regulate itself.

“I believed then (as I do now) that the FCC, in the discharge of its public interest responsibilities and consistent with its authority under the Communications Act, could play a constructive and appropriate role by providing a forum for the discussion of this issue and by encouraging self-regulatory reforms by the broadcast industry,” he wrote in "Family Viewing: A Balancing of Interests,” a 1977 essay in the Journal of Communications.

Wiley, who later became a key figure in the histories of both HDTV and satellite radio, ultimately lost the battle, though, in the end, network TV did tone it down a notch in response to the controversy—for a while.

Why Terry Rakolta’s campaign initially drew blood, but ultimately proved unsuccessful

Rakolta’s efforts to kill Married ... With Children looked like they did the job at first, but ultimately, they made the show stronger.

Her frustration with “Her Cups Runneth Over” was not helped by the fact that Fox was still a fairly small network at the time. In a 2010 special that ran on the Biography network, it was revealed that Rakolta’s initial anger about the episode was fueled by her initial complaint to the network, which wasn’t handled by an on-staff customer complaint department, but by the writer of the episode, Marcy Vosburgh.

Vosburgh, who died in 2016, explained the idea behind the show’s approach to Rakolta: “I said, ‘We sort of take a British approach to censorship: If it’s offensive, you can always change the channel.’”

A scene from "Her Cups Runneth Over" involving a male stripper. Not as over-the-top as some of the other parts of the episode.

That proved the wrong thing to say to a politically connected homemaker, and Rakolta’s campaign quickly heated up. In the span of a month, multiple advertisers had written back to Rakolta, agreeing that their ads weren’t a good fit for the network. That put the pressure on the show, and led Fox to hold off a similarly controversial episode in an effort to stop the bloodletting.

(That episode, “I’ll See You in Court,” didn’t air on U.S. television until 2002, more than 13 years after Rakolta’s campaign.)

The campaign had a two-fold effect. It drew attention to Rakolta, who responded by doing things like getting interviewed by The New York Times and showing up on television, leading her to start a group called Americans for Responsible Television. Meanwhile, the controversy raised ratings for the show, at a time when Fox needed a ratings success.

The situation, certainly, put pressure on Fox, but Rakolta’s complaining actually made the show more attractive to advertisers by raising ratings. Meanwhile, Fox did something small, but important, as a concession to Rakolta: It changed the air time of the show from 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., ensuring that the all-important Family Viewing Hour would be safe from Al Bundy’s ultra-crass lifestyle.

In an article published in the very first issue of Entertainment Weekly in 1990, during the too-short period when Jeff Jarvis was editor-in-chief, Gene Seymour and Veronica Byrd made the case that Rakolta’s protest failed to even do much damage in the end. Rakolta says three advertisers quit the show for good; Fox only conceded just one. The time change, even though it was half an hour, made all the difference, it turns out, and it brought many advertisers back—and they were paying higher rates than before.

Soon enough, the show was drawing the highest ratings in the then-fledgling network’s history, with a holiday-themed episode bringing in a record 17 million viewers at a time when a number like that meant something. (It may have helped that the episode, guest-starring Kinison, aired immediately after “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” the very first episode of The Simpsons.)

Michael Moye, the show’s co-creator, admitted that Rakolta forced the show to ease up on some of the edgier jokes.

”Everybody (at Fox) is just a tad more nervous than they were last year,” he told the magazine. ”We gotta kinda watch ourselves now. For instance, I seriously doubt you’ll find Al Bundy circumcised this year. We proposed it to the network and they said, ‘Uh-uh.’ So, yeah, we’re feeling the pinch.”

It helped, as well, that Rakolta eventually eased up, too.

“I’m still waiting for that fruit basket from Fox,” Rakolta told EW.