HAVING sorted out Tom Cruise (pictured below) by effectively giving him the sack from Paramount, Viacom and CBS boss Sumner Redstone is turning his fire on the FCC, the government agency mandated by George Bush to crackdown on indecent material, defined as anything that "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium".

Redstone, in his keynote address to the Media Institute, warned that "community standards" were in effect measured by complaints supposedly from the public but in fact lodged by two groups, the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association, a case of "the tail wagging the dog".

With fines imposed by the FCC reaching as high as $3.3m in the case of an episode of Without A Trace that has a teenage orgie scene, incurring its ire can have drastic financial consequences. "Give the government the tools to punish those it doesn't like or silence what it doesn't want to hear, and you undermine democracy, " Redstone warned. Hear, hear.