PBS's Lip-Reading Effort

Paula Kerger, new chief of PBS, says the FCC's restrictions and fines could put some stations out of business. (By Frederick M. Brown -- Getty Images)

"Our current policy is, we try to follow the zig or the zag here of the FCC," PBS programming chief John Wilson explained to critics.

"We are now blurring lips when . . . to a reasonable person making this judgment . . . you can tell what they are saying. That's on the advice of counsel."

Kerger said the FCC commissioners think they are communicating clearly what standards should be.

"My point to them is that we, as public television, don't have the resources to try to understand what they're thinking. . . . I can't tell you, as I stand here today, that I . . . have a clear understanding. When you look at the rulings as they have transpired . . . I don't see a clear path."

Kerger said she recently visited FCC commissioners to try to find out whether adult language in Ken Burns's upcoming 14-hour documentary on World War II, "The War," would cause PBS stations to be fined if aired earlier than 10 p.m. PBS's current plans call for airing it at 8, though it's not scheduled to debut until fall '07.

"No one said, 'Oh, go ahead and run it.' They said, 'Well, you know, we understand.' So I can't really . . . read their minds. I don't know."

She defended the language in the project. "If you have someone telling a story about their experiences in the war and in telling that story a profanity is uttered, sometimes it makes a really big difference. And the impact of it is washed away or radically diminished if it's just bleeped out."

And airing the documentary at 10, she explained, would greatly reduce the number of people who would see the project, which, she said, Burns believes is his most important work.