Can you say that on TV?

Cher said it. Bono said it. Even Nicole Richie from “The Simple Life” said it.

And now the feds are looking to rein in the networks responsible for letting the F-word out into the public airwaves.

After a year of fast-falling taboos on network television in which everything from nude corpses to sibling sex has been met mostly with resignation, it looks like one word has pushed Washington lawmakers and bureaucrats into action.

The trigger was last year’s Golden Globes broadcast, in which U2 rocker Bono said, “This is really, really, f------ brilliant.” Broadcasters have a seven-second delay in which to bleep out offensive language, but because NBC let it go, the Federal Communications Commission considered imposing its usual penalty, a fine.

Yet in October, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau let NBC off the hook, reasoning that Bono had used the word as an adjective rather than a verb, and outraged citizens showered Washington with e-mails. Individual members of Congress received thousands, and the FCC itself more than 100,000, said Ken Johnson, spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC.

Enforcement issue

Last week, the committee announced a Jan. 28 hearing -- titled “Can You Say That on TV?” -- to examine how the commission enforces indecency laws. FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell has asked fellow commissioners to overturn the Enforcement Bureau’s decision on the NBC-Bono incident. He has also asked Congress to support a bill, scheduled to be introduced Wednesday, that would increase penalties tenfold for indecent programming. The current cap for a single fine is $27,500.

“Passions are running very high right now,” Johnson says. “Many members of Congress believe that broadcasters have crossed the line.” While the FCC is expected to reverse the NBC ruling, the hearing is likely to reignite the cultural wars between 1st Amendment advocates and parents’ groups.

Special effects that were shocking in movies two years ago now show up regularly on CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” in which crimes are reconstructed in flashback. In addition to A-words and B-words, the Parents Television Council cites graphic close-ups of nude corpses, mutilated bodies, sibling sex, pornographic snuff films, cannibalism and sex clubs.

From its 1993 debut, “NYPD Blue” has pushed the envelope with male and female nudity; the use of swear words has also escalated in the last year.

Breaking taboos is a universal cultural phenomenon that has gathered unprecedented speed in the age of pay cable and satellite television. “Everyone knows you couldn’t say ‘pregnant’ in 1952,” says Robert J. Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Throughout the tumultuous social changes in the ‘60s, television remained focused on limiting language and content, he said, resulting in shows that were out of step with the times. “Now, you’re seeing this catch-up, and it seems to be happening really fast, because nothing happened for 50 years. Cultural standards changed and broadcasting didn’t. Now it seems like it’s unbelievably out of control.”

To some, envelope-pushing reached the far limit last fall with “Coupling,” a comedy whose nonstop innuendos included a man excited by his girlfriend’s shaved pubis, and “Skin,” a drama featuring a porn king dad. Both were quickly canceled, although that was widely attributed to quality, not content.

Network television, which operates under standards enforced by the FCC, is considered the last bastion of propriety, trailing behind basic and premium cable services, which do not. But networks, beset with what TV Guide Editor in Chief Michael Lafavore calls “HBO envy,” have tended to move in on the ground broken by cable. Lafavore says they will undoubtedly be airing material now seen and heard on programs such as HBO’s “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos,” which frequently use strong obscenities, and FX’s “Nip/Tuck,” a show filled with gory surgical mishaps. “Every taboo will fall eventually,” Lafavore says.

“There really aren’t any taboos anymore,” argues Joe Saltzman, a USC journalism professor. “There’s taste and decorum. When they watch MTV and see two women kissing, it doesn’t mean anything to kids. Maybe it’s a shock to older people who are still under the impression there are taboos in society.” To viewers who have about 100 channels in their homes, it makes no sense to have separate standards, he says. “It’s absurd when you can go to [cable] television and watch adult programming, then turn to NBC, CBS and ABC and they’re still arguing over words and phrases.”

Some of the most active critics of the state of the medium are members of the Parents Television Council, who say they are trying to stem the avalanche of violent, nearly pornographic and gruesome, desensitizing material heading for their homes. Typically, sex and violence top the list of members’ concerns, says Tim Winter, executive director of the organization, which tracks instances of sex, foul language and violence on television and targets campaigns to Hollywood, Capitol Hill, the FCC and advertisers.

Winter says he was overwhelmed last year by the response to a Parents Television Council study showing a 95% increase in foul language from 1998 to 2002 during the so-called family hour, 8 to 9 p.m.

Drawing a line

Winter objects to Hollywood’s typical argument -- that it only holds a mirror to society. “There has to be a line you draw and say this far and no further,” he says.

That line has been debated since 1973, when a radio station broadcast comic George Carlin’s famous “seven dirty words” routine in midafternoon. Five years later, the Supreme Court gave the FCC the power to censor language and content on radio and television in response to complaints from the public. But over the last decade, the commission has imposed no hard and fast rules on specific words.

The FCC divides offensive content into two areas: obscene and indecent. To be obscene, material has to appeal to prurient interests in a way that exceeds “contemporary community standards,” depicts sex in a “patently offensive way” and “lacks serious artistic, political, literary or scientific value.”

“Indecent” is defined as “sexual or excretory references that do not rise to the level of obscenity.”

In 2002, the FCC ruled that some specific words could escape sanction if they were uttered as an insult or in anger. In letting NBC off the hook, the FCC reasoned that Bono had used the word in an exclamatory fashion, and since it did not literally describe sexual or excretory activities, it was outside the commission’s purview.

According to Newton Minnow, former FCC chairman, the fact that just about anything goes stems partly from the panel “walking away from the issues.”

“It’s a combination of our own government’s fault, industry’s fault and technological change,” he says.

If the FCC’s efforts have tended to ebb and flow with the political tide, they seem to have misjudged the effect the F-word still has on the public.

“I find it peculiar the FCC would make a ruling based on grammar,” says Pamela Munro, a linguistics professor at UCLA. “In my opinion, people will find it offensive in any use.”

Poking fun at the idea of taboos altogether, some actors substitute reasonable facsimiles like “hiss,” “ship” or “fug.” Last fall, Whoopi Goldberg used the exclamation “mother ferret” in an episode of her NBC show “Whoopi” that featured the small animal. The Comedy Central cable channel broadcast an episode of its subversive cartoon “South Park” that used the S-word 162 times with a counter in the corner of the screen.

The idea of protecting children from obscene and indecent programming, although laudable and necessary, hasn’t really been thought through, Thompson says. Many safeguards have proven ineffective.

Take the idea of “family hour.” “The problem is, the entire middle of the country, a 10 o’clock show starts at 9 -- in California at 8 -- when many kids are still up,” he says, adding, “one could argue the biggest taboos broken are on tabloid talk shows that kids watch when they come home from school and have a snack. ‘Jenny Jones.’ ‘Jerry Springer.’ They’re having shows where adults like to get sexually excited dressing in diapers and then come out in diapers.”

Also missing the mark is a 1997 TV ratings system -- parental guidelines similar to the ones used by the movie industry but supposedly linked to a V-chip technology to block unwanted programs. Many parents have reported having trouble figuring it out. Last year, TV Guide dropped the ratings from its listings after a 12-week test showed that only eight of 160,000 test participants noticed or cared.

One school of thought has it that TV ratings, like movie ratings, actually allow more extreme content because creators have more freedom with an R or a TVMA rating.

Ironically, perhaps, one result of the crossed boundaries has been a raising of the aesthetics bar of TV. “The irony is that the shows are filled with this taboo stuff, but it’s also some of the best TV we’ve made in this country,” Thompson says. “It’s something the networks have to respond to.

“The fact is, once boundaries are broken, the toxic waste is allowed to come in and play by the same rules. So if you want ‘The Sopranos’ in the world, I think we have to accept the ‘Jackasses’ of the world.”

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Indecency timeline

From “All in the Family” to “South Park,” TV keeps pushing the boundaries.

1971 “All in the Family” introduces the words “hell,” “damn” and assorted ethnic slurs into prime-time network television.

1978 The U.S. Supreme Court gives the Federal Communications Commission the power to regulate broadcasts, a decision prompted by the George Carlin monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” which had been aired in midafternoon on radio.

1994 Fox airs an episode of “The George Carlin Show,” in which Carlin says one of his words seven times. The words are bleeped out.

2001 TNN airs unedited versions of “The Godfather” films, which contain coarse language and violence.

2001 “South Park” cartoon characters satirize ratings- obsessed networks by uttering “s---” 162 times.

2002 ESPN airs TV movie “A Season on the Brink” in which Brian Dennehy as basketball coach Bobby Knight says “f---” 15 times in the first half-hour.

2002 “NYPD Blue” introduces “bull----” on network TV.

2003 Clint Eastwood and Ray Charles discuss on a PBS airing of “The Blues” whether they’re allowed to say “mother------.”

2003 During his appearance on the Golden Globes, U2’s Bono says, “This is really, really, f------ brilliant.”

The FCC says that because the word was used as an adjective to modify an exclamation, it is outside the commission’s mandate to punish indecent words used in a sexual context.

2003 Despite cautions from Paris Hilton to watch her language on Fox’s Billboard Music Awards, Nicole Richie of “The Simple Life” improvises, “Have you ever tried to get cow---- out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f------ simple.” (The expletives were bleeped out of the West Coast broadcast.)

2004 “South Park” satirizes the FCC’s ruling when a teacher tells students they may use a common swear word, but only “in the figurative noun form or the adjective form.”