No Rock And Roll Fun

THE HALF A MILLION DOLLAR NIPPLE: Janet Jackson may yet turn out to have the most expensive breasts in history, as it's being muttered the FCC are going to fine, and fine again, CBS for her "unexpected" breast peek-a-bo at the Superbowl. In what seems to be stretching a point, the FCC is going to impose the maximum US27,500 fine on any CBS affiliate which is also owned by the CBS parent Viacom - there's twenty of those, and that will come to just over half a million. It's not really clear what the logic is for this: if CBS affiliates owned by other companies are judged to not be responsible for the tiny little bit of flesh poked out, what makes the Viacom-owned ones different? Unless this is merely an attempt by the FCC to evade the law's upper limit on fines by coming up with a cunning scheme, which would seem to be slightly unfair.

Of course, massive fines for local TV stations: Good news for Bush - less money for local news programming.