Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Married by America
Married by America was a show on television which aired in the United States on the Fox Network in the spring of 2003.
The premise of the show was simple: a variety of contestants were introduced on the air, then viewers could call in and vote for certain candidates. The top male and female vote-getters would then be married on live television. In the end, none of the couples got married.
The show was controversial when Fox aired it; many observers thought that it was degrading to both the participants and to the general notion of marriage. Fox defended its programming decision and there was no great upcry, probably because very few people watched the show, in spite of a premiere which aired after an episode of the then-megahit American Idol.
Over a year after the show's cancellation, the FCC fined FOX a record $1.2 million due to an episode which featured raunchy strippers and a woman licking whipped cream off a man's nipple. The ruling underwent great scrutiny when blogger Jeff Jarvis uncovered that in spite of initial FCC claims of 159 complaints, they admitted to only receiving 90, which came from only 23 people. Jarvis studied the complaints and realized all but 2 are virtually identical, meaning that a whopping total of THREE people sent complaints which led to a $1.2 million judgment. Armed with the new information, FOX promised to fight the fine.
External links
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details