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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

TV stations pull ‘Saving Private Ryan’

Mark Washburn Knight Ridder

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Fearing government fines for airing coarse language and graphic material, Charlotte’s WSOC-TV decided Wednesday not to show the ABC network movie scheduled for Veterans Day.

What’s out: “Saving Private Ryan,” a World War II story of heroism and valor.

What’s in: an edited-for-TV version of the R-rated Eddie Murphy comedy “Coming to America.”

Other ABC affiliates – including those in Atlanta; Detroit; Dallas; Des Moines, Iowa; and Orlando, Fla. – also are pulling the Steven Spielberg wartime movie starring Tom Hanks.

The cancellations are emblematic of a quandary broadcasters say they face in the indecency crackdown by the Federal Communications Commission after Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl. Individual stations face fines for airing material considered indecent, but broadcasters say there is no clear definition of what indecency is.

Lee Armstrong, WSOC-TV’s vice president and general manager, said the station got complaints from viewers the last time “Saving Private Ryan” aired, mostly about the language in the show. ABC aired the film, in its uncut form, in 2001 and 2002.

The 1998 movie, nominated for 11 Oscars and winner of five, deals with the D-Day invasion of June 1944 and the efforts of a small unit to find a paratrooper whose brothers had been killed.

It carried an “R” rating in theatrical release for “intense, prolonged, realistically graphic sequences of war violence, and for language,” according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Other major ABC affiliates in the Carolinas, including WOLO in Columbia, S.C., and WTVD in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., were planning Wednesday to air the movie as scheduled. Nationally, the ABC network has 225 affiliates.

“Given the content of the film, I would say it is highly unlikely anyone at the FCC would bat an eye,” said David Scott, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communications at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

“The problem with the FCC is that the indecency rule is vague,” said Scott, who specializes in media law. “It relies on contemporary community standards. So the problem is, how do you define a community?”

“Right now there is somewhat of a lack of clarity about the whole issue of what is going to be fined and what isn’t,” said Armstrong of WSOC.

“We certainly have respect for the artistic value of the movie,” she said. “Our concern is that in the present climate, people have heartfelt concern about the ‘safe harbor’ time.”

“Safe harbor” includes the network prime-time hours between 8 and 10 p.m., when the FCC expects broadcasters to be mindful of the presence of children in the viewing audience.

In recent months, the FCC has proposed fines against broadcasters for airing the Super Bowl half-time show; an episode of Fox’s “Married by America” that featured topless dancers in sexual poses; and a local San Francisco show where a man exposed himself. But the FCC has never fined broadcasters for airing productions on a cultural par with “Saving Private Ryan.”

“Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law?” asked Raymond Cole, president of WOI in Des Moines, Iowa, which also decided to pull the movie.

“Can a movie with an ‘M’ rating, however prestigious the production or poignant the subject matter, be shown before 10 p.m.? With the current FCC, we just don’t know,” he said in a statement.

Armstrong said that the network’s contract with Spielberg forbade any editing of the movie, and ABC would not allow the film to be shown on WSOC beginning at 10 p.m.

ABC said the movie would carry advisories and a mature-audience parental guideline. The network provided local affiliates with a copy of the program this week, and Armstrong said it was deemed inappropriate because of content for WSOC and two other stations owned by Cox Communications, WSB in Atlanta and WFTV in Orlando.