• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 21, 2006

Indecency complaints are on the rise again. Not necessarily indecency itself--just the complaints.

Just over 44,000 complaints were lodged in the fourth quarter of 2005--more than 50 percent more that the third quarter, reports the Federal Communications Commission.

For the year, 233,440 complaints were made, which is hardly anything next to 2004, when more than 1 million were posted--the year of Janet Jackson's breast.

The FCC needs to add a new category--complaints against really poorly written programming. Now I know what you are going to say. There is already a system like that in place--it's called the Nielsen rating system.

But those numbers only really show what people watched. It doesn't identify the people that turned away in disgust. A small 2.2 rating in, say, the adult 18-49 demo for a big network prime-time show isn't a good number. But that number doesn't tell you who turned their nose up.

The FCC needs to establish a complaint category for stuff with poor story lines, bad acting, false-looking scenery, ho-hum music, unresolved romantic relationships--and, worst of all, puppets.

That's really indecent.

No doubt it's possible to file a charge under the current system. What is needed then would be a sub-category, say "boringly indecent." These would be for golf events. Tiny little white balls being followed for yards and yard by scores of cameras. Please. Wedge some Mexican jumping beans into golf balls--then see who can hit them. You'll have some crazy TV then--or at least an Ashton Kutcher reality show.

TV pressure groups spend tons of time trying to tell the rest of America what not to watch--so-called indecent programming. That's weird--especially in this current world where there is more variety in TV programming than ever before.

What's really indecent is that they can't find the channel-changing button on the remote.