Married by America
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Married by America was a reality television program and competition which aired in the United States on Fox 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 could then be married on live television, and in the weeks before, were sequestered within a hotel and resort to learn more about each other before the upcoming ceremony, which was shown to viewers. 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. Because of this, the Fox affiliate in Raleigh-Durham, WRAZ (Channel 50) refused to air the program in its entirety due to the network refusing to preview the program for the station before air so the station could determine if it met its broadcast standards, pre-empting the hour with reruns of The Andy Griffith Show instead [1]. Fox defended its programming decision and there was no great outcry, probably because very few people watched the show, in spite of a premiere which aired after an episode of 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 pixilated strippers [2]and a woman licking whipped cream off a man's nipple during a bachelor party. The ruling underwent great scrutiny when blogger Jeff Jarvis uncovered that although the FCC originally claimed to have received 159 complaints, it later admitted to only receiving 90, which came from only 23 people. Jarvis studied the complaints and realized that all but 2 were virtually identical to each other, meaning that the $1.2 million judgment was based on original complaints written by a total of only three people. Armed with the new information, Fox promised to fight the fine.
