| abstract | - Late Friday evening is a prime death slot for trendy programs aimed at young, affluent viewers, as they are all down to the pub studying the next big trend, or looking for death slots of their own. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission ruled in 1975 (when a majority of Americans had never seen a sex organ) that television networks had a First-Amendment duty to air "family-friendly" programming from 8 to 9 p.m. Inspectors went out with steel rules to measure inches of cleavage and verify that all the words uttered were OK for Scrabble. Clever broadcasters, however, knew that there were a dozen ways to make prudish parents shut off the television without ever showing Bare Tit. The FCC decree was overturned in 1977, when someone actually read the First Amendment, but broadcasters still prize this first hour of prime time as a death slot for truly disgusting programming. In the 1990s, when the viewing public started staying up later, and The Late Show was followed by The Late Late Show, networks had to reach far into the wee hours to find slots where viewers could not click their Nielsen buttons except once an hour as they rolled over in their sleep. As even the TV Guide Channel is viewed by get-a-lifers for hours at a time, it is harder than ever to find a slot to place a program to ensure that no one will watch it.
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