By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Fox entertainment division President Peter Liguori has flown to Washington this week to help the Senate Commerce Committee celebrate the Impact of Violence on Children Day of Bloviation.
It will be Liguori's debut performance at a congressional hearing.
We wondered why he'd want to go within 10 yards of 253 Russell Senate Office Building, the society at these gatherings being very mixed.
Liguori is the only actual working TV executive who was invited to today's session. Other panelists are FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Martin's BFF Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council; a big cheese with the American Psychological Association; a professor from the department of communications at the University of Arizona; and constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe.
"They called and asked for me," Liguori told The TV Column yesterday over breakfast.
He said he did not know why they wanted him in particular, as opposed to a counterpart at another network.
But of course it's because his network broadcasts "24," in which uber-counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer scurries around torturing people left and right while tossing off great one-liners like, "You are going to tell me everything I want to know or I swear to God I will hurt you before I kill you."
"24" is Washington politicos' favorite show that does not star Tim Russert -- remember last year's Heritage Foundation forum " '24' and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction or Does it Matter?," attended by the secretary of Homeland Security, two national security wonks and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?
And this season, after warming up with 67 torture scenes over its first five seasons, "24" set a new world record for most tortures conducted in a single day on a TV series, prompting the dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to take a meeting with the show's creators, complaining that Bauer had become a bad influence on his cadets.
Presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo, on the other hand, came out staunchly pro-Bauer during a May GOP debate, saying, "I am looking for Jack Bauer at this point," when asked how he would respond to a bizarre hypothetical terrorism scenario involving shopping malls and Gitmo.
Among the audiovisual aids Liguori is expected to bring to today's hearing is a poster showing the content-ratings bug and advisories for "24," and the voice-over advisory provided by Kiefer Sutherland, who plays Bauer.
Over smoked salmon and underdone toast, Liguori acknowledged modestly that the series "happens to be" one of the "more muscular shows" on prime time.
On the other hand, he noted, it is a "creative beacon" within the TV community, having won Emmys last season for best drama series and best actor in a drama series.
Liguori will follow the guest of honor, FCC Chairman Martin, who recently unveiled his report "Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children," in which he made his pitch to be given the power to regulate violence on television for the sake of the children, in much the same way the FCC regulates indecency on TV.
Martin will argue the FCC needs to be given the authority to protect, for instance, the 360,000 of the country's more than 40 million 2-to-11-year-olds who this past season watched Fox's "24."
It's going to be a tough act for Liguori to follow. Martin wants to come back strong, having recently been spanked by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, which dismissed as "arbitrary and capricious" the FCC's decision to fine stations affiliated with Liguori's network for having aired the 2002 and '03 Billboard Music Awards, which included Cher's colorful response to those who say she's washed up, and Nicole Richie's reflections on the challenges of cleaning cowpie off a Prada purse.
Featuring Liguori and Martin at the same hearing is pure Hollywood casting.
Martin is sure to mention, as he did in a statement accompanying his study, that while research is inconclusive as to whether watching violent programming actually causes aggressive behavior in children, studies by the surgeon general and the Federal Trade Commission found exposure to violence on TV is associated with an increase in aggressive or violent behavior in children.
Oh yes, he did.
And, then he added, "In other words, the evidence does not prove causation, but it does demonstrate a strong correlation."
After which, Liguori is expected to toss back to the committee those very same two studies and the FCC's own to assert that, while there may be a connection between television and violence, without that proven causal link, trying to impose content limits on the media is pure bunk -- not to mention a violation of the First Amendment.
"We all agree that we should be safeguarding children from inappropriate programming," Liguori said yesterday.
"Their instincts come from the right place," he said of the Senate committee, adding, "We share that same instinct." Then he began to spout statistics:
· One out of six parents use the V-chip technology that allows parents to block adult-rated programming from their children.
· Nearly 90 percent of parents with kids under 11 say they monitor what their kids watch on TV.
· 75 percent of parents tell their kids they can't watch TV until they finish their homework.
And, our favorite:
· 68 percent of homes in the country don't have kids under age 18 living in them to start with.
As is usual with these hearings, Liguori's statistics will be canceled out by the statistic-spewing of his opponents. We've got money on Martin bringing up that 70 percent of respondents in a poll conducted for the Associated Press said there was too much violence on television.
And someone's sure to mention the recently released Kaiser Family Foundation study that found 43 percent of parents think violence in the media contributes "a lot" to young people's behavior and two-thirds of parents say they favor government regulations to limit the amount of sex and violence on TV during the early evening hours.
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