Bill Would Ban “Girls Gone Wild” Videos

A state Senate committee will take up a bill this week to ban television advertising of “Girls Gone Wild” videos. Dickson Senator Doug Jackson played parts of the TV advertisements during a meeting last week of the Senate Commerce Committee.

He argues that the advertising for the DVDs should be barred because the product is obscene, and thus illegal under Tennessee law. Stacey Briggs, spokesperson for the Tennessee Cable Communications Association, disagreed.

“It is too broad, the way it’s written. We think it’s unconstitutionally too broad. In Tennessee, cable providers do not locally insert these commercials. These are part of national advertising.”

Briggs says despite Jackson’s argument, no jury in Tennessee has found the DVDs to be legally obscene.

Whit Adamson, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, says the bill raises questions for broadcasters as well as cable companies – questions that should be addressed by the Federal Communications Commission.

“And maybe we should ask the senator, at least in our case, the broadcasters’ case, to send it to the FCC and see if they’ll give us an opinion about whether this advertisement is in fact obscene, because what he didn’t address is, there are commercial free speech protections for advertisements. And like Stacey said, there’s nothing that has been deemed obscene, yet.”

Senator Jackson’s bill to keep the commercials from airing on television is up for discussion tomorrow.

WEB EXTRA:

The on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia has a footnoted article on “Girls Gone Wild” with dates of legal actions taken against the company and its founder. The footnotes refer to various news media stories about the Santa Monica, CA, firm.