FCC: 'Desperate Housewives' promo not indecent after all
A mildly steamy locker-room intro from ABC's Monday Night Football isn't "indecent" after all, the Federal Communications Commission decided Monday.
The segment, which aired Nov. 15, featured Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens and "Desperate Housewives" actress Nicollette Sheridan. Wearing only a towel, Sheridan tries to seduce the football player.
Analysts at the FCC's "enforcement" bureau spent four months critiquing the video, weighing the camera angles (Sheridan drops the towel and is shown from the waist up from behind) against the length of the segment. They eventually concluded (pdf file): "Although the scene apparently is intended to be titillating, it simply is not graphic or explicit enough to be indecent under our standard."
Still, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, took the opportunity to lecture ABC on broadcast standards: "There wasn't much self-discipline in this particular promotion."
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
