TVSquad

Would you like to see more nudity and profanity on network television?

It's no secret that the networks are losing ground to the cable channels when it comes to original scripted programming, especially dramas. Just take a look at the Emmy nominations for Best Drama this year and you see that three of the six nominated are from cable: Mad Men, Damages, and Dexter). And the three that are from the networks are shows that have been a while and are (arguably) on the back nine when it comes to their life: Boston Legal, Lost, and House. While the network shows obviously get more viewers than cable, cable (and online) is the place to go for more creative content and buzz.

Wired's Epicenter blog has a piece about how the more free world of cable television is hurting network TV.

Screener Hell is an semi-regular feature in which lead blogger Keith McDuffee tries to fry my brain with the worst TV has to offer.

(S02E01/S02E02) Do you have any idea how bad a show you have to be to include several scenes of gratuitous nudity and still be boring!? I love nudity. The more unnecessary the nudity, the better. My favorite kind of nudity is that mid-'90s Cinemax nudity where the main character, despite her ongoing undercover investigation into the exotic world of high-class prostitution, decides to take a shower for 20 minutes for no good reason at all. I'll watch pretty much any kind of claptrap if it includes that kind of nudity.

But not this show. Not Foursome. There is no amount of tanned, taut Californian wannabe-actress flesh that could get me to watch another minute of this show. Please, don't think this is because I'm maturing; the show is just that bad...

Before I left for Los Angeles, I got on the phone with Scrubs creator and executive producer Bill Lawrence to talk about this coming Thursday's musical episode. What I got was a pretty wide-ranging interview about Scrubs, his other project, Nobody's Watching, the evils of network "testing," his opinions on other shows, and a bunch of other stuff.

He's pretty sure that the show will come back for a seventh season. "It's becoming apparent that it'll be up to us if the show is on again this year, so we'll do one more year," he told me. "Again, the same as last year, I came into this year going 'Ah, it's the fucking last year of this show,' and now we're downstairs scrambling because our studio is like, 'This isn't the last year.' So now we have to re-outline all the stories and change it and all that shit."

Because Zach Braff has mentioned that this season might be his last, I asked Lawrence if a seventh season will include Braff. "I think I'd only do the show with Zach, personally," he said.

And when we say "NSFW," we really mean "NSFW." Family Guy fans undoubtedly remember the episode "Road to Rhode Island" in which Brian and Stewie travel across the country after Stewie misplaces their plane tickets. The B story for that episode involved Lois purchasing a marriage counseling video with a special "men only" section in which the instructor does a strip tease. In this clip found on Google Video, the instructor takes the strip tease a tad further than she did in the original episode. Rumors are abound as to where the clip came from: some claim it was done as a joke played on either Seth Green or Seth MacFarlane, others say it's included as a deleted scene on one of the DVDs. For some reason the only thing I could think about while watching the clip is that I haven't seen Fritz the Cat in a really long time. Weird.

[via Digg]

ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX have all filed appeals to the FCC's fines for indecent language and subject matter in their programming. The biggest fine was against CBS's Without a Trace for a scene showing too much of a teen-age orgy (or maybe they didn't like the subject matter altogether?). For that, the FCC says CBS must pay an unprecedented $3.63 million. There were also fines against The Early Show on CBS for sucking - ha! just kidding - for profanity in 2004 when a Survivor castoff said "shit", and against The Billboard Music Awards on FOX for the same thing.

The networks are all appealing the fines on the grounds that the FCC's tough new stance on indecency is vague and inconsistent.

I have to admit, ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons is right. The "N" that comes before programs on HBO is a good thing in general, but they should really be more descriptive. I mean, what kind of nudity is it? As Simmons says:

"...the N could mean anything - two dudes naked in a shower, a 53 year-old woman getting embalmed, even Kathy Bates going topless in About Schmidt."

He wants to replace the N with other letters, depending on the nudity situation. SN for Standard Nudity, SSC for Strong Sexual Content, UDN for Unexpected, Delightful Nudity...and more.