air obscene, indecent or profane content in violation of the law and the Commission rules. The FCC has many tools to enforce these important policy requirements, including the ability to revoke a station license. Yet it is increasingly clear that the paltry fines the FCC assesses have become nothing more than a joke. They have become simply a cost of doing business, for far too many stations regard the prospect of a fine as merely a potential slap on the wrist, and the few fines levied by the Commission have lost their deterrent effect.

If the CEO of a broadcast company came into your living_room and personally said these words, you would be appalled. If the Members up here read the transcripts of some of these shows in the public domain today, as people are watching this hearing, they would be appalled. However, if the station airs it to the entire community any time of the day, with kids in the audience at best, at best right now, all they get is a slap on the wrist.

This is especially true of the multi-billion dollar media conglomerates who control a multitude of stations. What possible deterrent can $27,000 as a fine have on a company which reaps $27 billion in annual revenues? Moreover, the Federal Communications Commission has never invoked its right not to renew a license or to revoke a license for violations of indecency rules, even when such violations are repeated and apparently willful.

We need to have a public discussion about the failure to use this enforcement and deterrent tool, even in the most egregious cases, and what the FCC plans to do about this issue.

Clearly, many broadcasters need to clean up their act. Education is also needed to ensure that parents know and understand the TV ratings system and the tools they can use in conjunction with that system such as the V chip for protecting their children, which is why I authored that legislation 7 years ago.

Today's hearing will allow us to explore the FCC's lackluster enforcement record with respect to these violations. It will also permit us a glimpse at the conduct of broadcast licensees who air content that leads to a coarsening of our culture and directly undermines the efforts of parents in raising their kids. Parents are increasingly frustrated and have every right to be angry at both certain licensees and the Federal Communications Commission itself. Finally, this hearing will also permit us to gain testimony on the legislation that Chairman Upton and I have introduced, along with many of our committee colleagues, to raise the fines available to the Federal Communications Commission tenfold over what they have historically been, ultimately to put some real bite in the punishment that these stations feel if they act contrary to the interests of the families of our country.

I want to thank the witnesses for their time in preparing for today's hearing. I want to thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for calling this very important session.

Mr. UPTON. Thank you.

I would like to recognize for an opening statement the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Tauzin.

Chairman TAUZIN. Thank you, Chairman Upton; and let me thank you for this very important hearing.

Indeed, in 1961, FCC Chairman Newt Minnow called television a vast wasteland. Do you remember? As we look back from 2004 through the prism of history, I suppose we have to marvel at how innocent television was in that day and how much we have seen television change, particularly when it comes to broadcast decency over these 40 years.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than four out of five parents are concerned today that their children are being exposed to too much sex and violence on television. We know that the television industry and others got together on a ratings system to help parents. There is a V chip in new television sets that parents can use today.

But the question is, what is the FCC's role? What is Congress's responsibility here when it comes to free use of the public spectrum by broadcasters and what is the FCC doing when it splits hairs as it did in the recent decision on singer Bono's use of an expletive during last year's Golden Globe awards?

All of us I am sure have heard, as I have, from parents in our districts concerned and confused about how such language can be used without any penalties during a show that is viewed by families across America, during a time when families get together and watch television. And for the FCC to split a hair as to whether the word is used as an adjective or a verb is rather ridiculous. I can tell you folks in my district, I am sure in yours, can't understand that, and they are confused.

Chairman Powell in a recent C-SPAN-covered event complained that the current fine schedule for finings that the FCC does occasionally make of violations of these rules are merely costs-of-doingbusiness-level fines. So what Mr. Upton and Mr. Markey have proposed to us and many of you have already signed on as cosponsors, I included, is that we end this business of having a fine schedule that is just a cost of doing business and have a real fine schedule, tenfold increases in this bill.

The next question then is, is the FCC going to enforce it vigorously? Is it going to be a strong message here that families expect the FCC to enforce this concern in a way that families feel comfortable sharing family hours with their children and watching television? And what are the networks going to do about it in terms of complying with, hopefully, a more vigorous enforcement by the FCC?

I want to thank Fox. I understand Fox has now announced that, in regard to future live award shows, that they are going to put in a 5-second delay. That is a good step. I have been on many radio shows where some delay is built in so that a caller, live caller who might use some very inappropriate language in calling into a radio show, can be deleted before it goes over the air. Networks like Fox obviously can take that route, and I am pleased at least one of them is announcing a plan to do that.

So this is a good hearing. We ought to get a good discussion, a good public airing of what are the limits that we as an American people would like to see enforced and what are the enforcement levels that are appropriate here. What is the responsibility of the FCC? Are they going to continue splitting hairs when they see a word used like singer Bono used in a Golden Globe award, or are

they going to literally say, no, that is off limits, and we are going to have some way of protecting against that becoming the rule on television in these family hours?

This is a good discussion. We ought to have it.

On the back side of it, we all have to be concerned about the first amendment and not go too far, obviously, that whatever we have to do has to respect the fact that our Founding Fathers very carefully told us in the Constitution as a government to be careful about the way we regulate or hem in or define the right of people to speak in our society.

There are some close questions here. But we ought to have a good discussion of it. I think the Upton-Markey approach of raising the fines, calling attention to it, calling on the FCC to be more aggressive in enforcement and calling upon the networks to hear that message and perhaps execute plans like Fox has announced to better avoid the conflict and avoid the contest between first amendment issues that might be posed here, instead of forcing us all into a conflict that requires us to define in constitutionally questionable ways-what are those limits.

This is going to be a good hearing. I thank the chairman for it. I want to thank him and Mr. Markey for the legislation that they have filed and congratulate you for making sure that the American public will engage us in this discussion. Thank you.

Mr. UPTON. Recognize the gentleman from the great State of Michigan, Mr. Dingell.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I thank you; and I commend you for holding this hearing. This has the potential to be a most useful and an interesting exercise; and, as such, I believe it should be pursued with vigor. I very much appreciate your interest and leadership in this matter.

Looking at the committee table and the roster of witnesses before us, I note there are several significant omissions in the attendees today to give us testimony on what is going on. I would note that the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and members of the Commission are not present. I would note that representatives of the networks and major broadcasting entities are not here with us today. I would like to hear what they have to say, both about the substance of the behavior that we inquire into and also about the public policy and also about how the different proposals that are before this committee would impact upon them.

I would note the very interesting phenomenon that a major network with income of tens of billions of dollars a year will be subject to penalties of $20 or maybe $200,000 in penalties, hardly more than a gnat bite in terms of its impact upon the policymaking of those companies and certainly not enough to stimulate any corrective behavior to address the concerns of the committee and the public with regard to proper use of the networks.

I would like to hear some discussion about whether or not licenses are being properly renewed to persons who have active disregard of the need for proper behavior and proper use of language and the licenses that they are given to use a public resource. But I don't see anybody at the committee table who can talk to us about this.

The penalties in the bill that we have sponsored, you under your leadership, Mr. Chairman, are good. They will be helpful. But they will again, I think, be regarded as little more than the cost of doing business. So I think that, while this is a useful hearing, it is both imperfect and incomplete.

We all know why we are here today. During the last year, 2 of the 4 major networks, NBC and Fox, during live programming broadcast a word beginning with the letter F into millions of American homes. The Federal Communications Commission determined that NBC's broadcast did not violate the agency's rule against broadcasting indecent speech, and the agency has not yet ruled on the Fox broadcast.

The fact that the FCC did not penalize the NBC network is curious at best, and I will discuss that in a minute. But the more pressing issue is how the networks permitted such speech to be aired into American homes. They have adequate mechanisms to address how matters escape into the airwaves and who have appropriate mechanisms for delay and other controls. Apparently, none was used here, and I see no signs of repentance on the part of the network that this was done. Nor do I see any signs of proper custody on the part of the Federal Communications Commission in looking to see that the outrage that is expressed by thousands of Americans is properly addressed.

The primary responsibility to ensure that network television does not contain profanity rests not with the FCC, although they are the ultimate arbiter, but with the networks themselves. The four major networks not only create the programming that a large segment of American viewers, including our children, watch every day, but they are the largest owners of broadcast television stations that profit handsomely from this, and it is good that they should. But this gives them a special responsibility to the citizens who have entrusted them with the public airwaves. They have a public trust which they are permitted to use for private profit. That is the system which has gone on for a long time, and it is perhaps a good one, but it doesn't seem to be working on matters of appropriate and important public concern.

It is certainly upsetting to me when this trust is as blatantly and repeatedly violated as it has been. I am sorry this panel, I note, does not include witnesses from the NBC and Fox, because I think the committee would have liked to have asked them about these broadcasts to again see how this comported with the policy of the broadcasters and to see how and what it is they propose to do to address their responsibilities to see that these networks use the assets which are given them by the taxpayers in a proper way.

I would like to have inquired what procedures or mechanisms were in place to prevent the airing of objectionable language. I would like to have asked what the network has changed in the way of its practices to ensure that families watching live network TV need not worry as to what language will suddenly be thrust into the living rooms for the children of this Nation.

I think the subcommittee would benefit to the answers to these questions. As yet, no network has chosen to appear.

I will note I have written the presidents of the four major networks to ask these and other questions. I have asked them to re

spond in a timely manner. I have asked also, Mr. Chairman, to you at this moment, that the letters be entered into the hearing record and that the record remain open to include the answers to these questions that are posed by these letters.

As the head of the FCC Enforcement Bureau, I note, Mr. Solomon, that your decisions are constrained, as they should be, by legal boundaries, amongst them the Constitution and case law. I am not here to debate your decision in the FCC case as being either right or wrong. You have a solid reputation. I am sure that you can defend your legal reasoning.

The problem, however, is that the decision defies common sense. When an agency acts in this way, it loses credibility. I do not think that the American people will accept that we are powerless either to ensure that the FCC acts or has authority to act in a proper way or that those who hold licenses to use public resource are permitted to snap their fingers under the nose of those who make the networks able to use the airwaves, which are in fact a public trust for private benefit.

Like many members of the committee, I am concerned also about the amount of indecent content of broadcast over radio airwaves. Recent penalties leveled against radio broadcasters have simply been passed off as the cost of doing business and have proven inadequate to deter violators. I am, however, encouraged by yesterday's FCC decision to impose significantly increased penalties on indecent radio broadcasting.

I would like to know whether or not the FCC needs additional authority, however, to indeed increase significantly the levels of the penalties or whether their policies will include the lifting of licenses of licensees who use the airwaves in this fashion without regard to anything other than a modest penalty.

Whether the FCC's decision was motivated by recent public outcry or whether it was in anticipation of today's hearing does not matter, although I do find myself curious about this.

Fear is a useful motivator, and I am pleased with the decision, even though it appears to be less virtue than concern for the possibility of an appearance today. I look forward, by the way, Mr. Chairman, to having them before us so that we can check out this reasoning.

I hope that it signals a heightened seriousness on the part of the agency. I will be watching closely to see that the FCC does not backtrack on its new-found virtue on this issue.

I look forward to your testimony, gentlemen of the witness panel, and particularly I would like to learn more about what the Congress might do, consistent with the first amendment, to curtail the increasing amount of filth that permeates the public airwaves. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. UPTON. Thank you, Mr. Dingell.

The gentleman's letters to the broadcasters will be included as part of the record.

I recognize Mr. Bilirakis for an opening statement.

I would remind members that if they waive their opening statements they will get an extra 3 minutes on questions.

Mr. BILIRAKIS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.