FCC Pushed Decency Rules for Cable TV

The new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told cable-television executives Tuesday that they needed to respond to public complaints and tighten decency standards for cable programming.
Kevin Martin, named to head the FCC by President Bush just last month, said during a brief appearance in San Francisco at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's annual trade show that the public is demanding limits on language, sexual content and nudity on television.
``When I first arrived at the commission, we received a few hundred complaints per year from parents,'' said Martin, a 38-year-old former aide to President Bush who has served as an FCC member for the past four years. ``The next year, we received a few thousand. And the following year, we received 10,000 and last year we received a million complaints.