Ms Carol Altieri

I think it's a 10 o'clock show and people will know after we get done with all of our promotion that `Wolf Lake' is not your typical show , said Carol Altieri , the CBS vice president for program practices.It's kind of dark and eerie and weird and wonderful and , quite frankly , I'm going to try to test the waters a bit on this , give this some latitude and see how our audience greets it..

This is not to say that anything now goes.

"I don't know if there are any taboos anymore," says Carol Altieri, VP of program practices at CBS.

``I think it's a 10 o'clock show and people will know after we get done with all of our promotion that `Wolf Lake' is not your typical show , '' said Carol Altieri , CBS' vice president for program practices.

``It's kind of dark and eerie and weird and wonderful and , quite frankly , I'm going to try to test the waters a bit on this , give this some latitude and see how our audience greets it , '' Altieri said.

So far , there has been little outcry.And officials at the FCC said the number of indecency complaints involving television remained negligible and no actions had been taken against stations for network programs this year.

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Carol Altieri, CBS

Carol Altieri, vice president of program practices for CBS Hollywood, has worked in the standards and practices department at CBS since 1972 and has seen many language taboos fall.

"There's a time I recall when 'damns' and 'hells' were still verboten, and then it got to the point where the dramatic imperative would dictate whether we could permit that," she says.

"In the early to mid-'80s, we started to loosen up on that because the audience seemed to accept it in manners that were appropriate, not just throwaway, but in dramatic moments when it was used for a specific purpose."

Now, it's not at all surprising for Altieri to see strong language in a script, although anything that takes God's name in vain is still off-limits.

"We don't just let it go by.If it comes out of a child's mouth we scrutinize it very closely, but for the most part that kind of language is fairly routine at this point."

Altieri attributes the permissive use of once-forbidden language to changes in society at large, which were reflected on television in the early 1970s when CBS canceled its rural sitcoms ("Green Acres," "Beverly Hillbillies") in favor of more socially relevant programs, including "All in the Family" and "Maude."

"I think it had a great deal to do with the American culture being shocked out of its innocence with the Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and all the civil unrest going on at the time," she says."At that point, television was either going to become irrelevant if it stuck with programs like 'Green Acres,' or it was going to reflect what was going on in society.We began to readjust our frame of reference and our thinking in terms of what kind of content was acceptable."

What was in the news also had an effect on prime time, Altieri says, from profanity on recordings made in Richard Nixon's White House to Bill Clinton's sex-with-an-intern scandal.
...
Newcomb and Altieri both say changes in the lexicon have allowed for more vulgarity on the air.
...
Altieri recalls the controversy surrounding the pilot episode of CBS's short-lived sitcom "Uncle Buck" in 1990.In an early scene, a 6-year-old yells at her brother, "You suck!"

Altieri says CBS was in a ratings slump at the time, which made the network more willing to test the waters of what the public would accept.Management wanted to shake things up.

"We were interpreting scripts in a more lenient fashion, and when that issue arose in the pilot, I kind of questioned if it was a great idea having it come out of a little girl's mouth," Altieri says.Advertisers and affiliates reacted, but not in an overwhelmingly negative way.
...
"I think it's a change in the lexicon," Altieri says."Kids started to use that language, not because of 'Uncle Buck,' because I don't think every kid in the country saw that, but as a matter of their own separate kind of language.At this point it means 'god-awful,' 'horrendous,' 'it stinks.' It's not taken these days as having a crass, coarse meaning the way it once was."

Context is everything, Altieri says, especially when it comes to profanity.
...
It just fit right in with the material," Altieri says.
...
They are the ones who tell us to go away, we don't like this, we're not going to watch it," Altieri says.

Carol Altieri, vice president of program practices for CBS Hollywood, has worked in the standards-and- practices department at CBS since 1972 and seen many language taboos fall."In the early to mid-'80s, we started to loosen up on (mild profanity) because the audience seemed to accept it in . . . in dramatic moments when it was used for a specific purpose," she says.

Altieri attributes the permissive use of once-forbidden language to changes in society at large.

"The boundaries have been changing and continuously evolving," said Carol Alteri, vice president of program practices for CBS."People have been desensitized." There are several reasons for the increased use of blue language on TV, but the primary one, Alteri and others note, is the increasing competition from other media, especially cable TV.... Also, because so many so-called bad words are now used unblinkingly by many people in everyday conversation, they've lost the impact they once had, Thompson said. "Bad language is like a fossil fuel," he added.

"I don't know if there are any taboos anymore," says Carol Altieri, VP of program practices at CBS."Over the years, we've had myriad references to everything in the Lewinsky matter, but we've tried to do it with a certain degree of subtlety.With Lewinsky, you couldn't do anything subtly.It was right out there."

The broadcast networks have long chafed at regulations banning nudity and foul language which do not apply to cable networks.Network executives are quite up front about the reason for "pushing the limits."

Carol Altieri, vice president of program practices for CBS Hollywood, has worked in the standards and practices department at CBS since 1972 and has seen many language taboos fall.

"There's a time I recall when 'damns' and 'hells' were still verboten, and then it got to the point where the dramatic imperative would dictate whether we could permit that," she says.

"In the early to mid-'80s, we started to loosen up on that because the audience seemed to accept it in manners that were appropriate, not just throwaway, but in dramatic moments when it was used for a specific purpose."

Now, it's not at all surprising for Altieri to see strong language in a script, although anything that takes God's name in vain is still off-limits.

"We don't just let it go by.If it comes out of a child's mouth we scrutinize it very closely, but for the most part that kind of language is fairly routine at this point."

Altieri attributes the permissive use of once-forbidden language to changes in society at large, which were reflected on television in the early 1970s when CBS canceled its rural sitcoms ("Green Acres," "Beverly Hillbillies") in favor of more socially relevant programs, including "All in the Family" and "Maude."

"I think it had a great deal to do with the American culture being shocked out of its innocence with the Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and all the civil unrest going on at the time," she says."At that point, television was either going to become irrelevant if it stuck with programs like 'Green Acres,' or it was going to reflect what was going on in society.We began to readjust our frame of reference and our thinking in terms of what kind of content was acceptable."

What was in the news also had an effect on prime time, Altieri says, from profanity on recordings made in Richard Nixon's White House to Bill Clinton's sex-with-an-intern scandal.

"There are so many different contributing factors, and that is what continues today," she says.

Newcomb and Altieri both say changes in the lexicon have allowed for more vulgarity on the air.
...
Altieri recalls the controversy surrounding the pilot episode of CBS's short-lived sitcom "Uncle Buck" in 1990.In an early scene, a 6-year-old yells at her brother, "You suck!"

Altieri says CBS was in a ratings slump at the time, which made the network more willing to test the waters of what the public would accept.Management wanted to shake things up.

"We were interpreting scripts in a more lenient fashion, and when that issue arose in the pilot, I kind of questioned if it was a great idea having it come out of a little girl's mouth," Altieri says.Advertisers and affiliates reacted, but not in an overwhelmingly negative way.
...
"I think it's a change in the lexicon," Altieri says."Kids started to use that language, not because of 'Uncle Buck,' because I don't think every kid in the country saw that, but as a matter of their own separate kind of language.At this point it means 'god-awful,' 'horrendous,' 'it stinks.' It's not taken these days as having a crass, coarse meaning the way it once was."

Context is everything, Altieri says, especially when it comes to profanity.
...
It just fit right in with the material," Altieri says.
...
They are the ones who tell us to go away, we don't like this, we're not going to watch it," Altieri says.