Utahn battles raunchy TV online

As CBS and MTV continue to take heat from irate Super Bowl viewers over Janet Jackson's breast exposure last Sunday, a Utahn wants to help stoke the fires of discontent over TV obscenity at home and nationwide.

Steven DeVore, an entrepreneur whose past ventures include a yet-to-be released feature-length film on the Book of Mormon and lucrative mass distribution of audio books, said he plans to launch a new Web site on March 1 dubbed "CleanTV."

He decided to enter the fray over deteriorating network television standards after top leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which he belongs, urged their members to get personally involved last fall during the faith's semiannual general conference.

Elder M. Russell Ballard challenged Latter-day Saints to "stand up and say enough is enough, and recommended that we send e-mails to TV stations and advertisers," DeVore remembers, in the belief that if enough people speak up, things will change. That, coupled with admonitions by LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley and other leaders to shun degrading media, "just kind of got me thinking."

When he searched the Internet for groups that actively oppose raunchy TV, he found a few targeting major networks and the Federal Communications Commission, but nothing that got to what he believes is the real change agent — local television stations and advertisers. He says they're analogous to the "clay feet" of the colossus described in the biblical book of Daniel, and he sees them as the "weak point" that the networks and major corporate advertisers rest on.

Local station affiliates are "paid to run network programming, and at same time they allocate spots for local advertising. They're able to take the ratings that network programs bring in and charge local advertisers to advertise on those ratings."

DeVore said his Web site — www.cleantv.net — will be configured so disgruntled viewers can pressure local stations and their advertisers with a few keystrokes, rather than navigating the "cumbersome and confusing" maze he said he encountered trying to register individual complaints on several other Web sites.

The e-mail program lets users select the names of stations, networks and both local and national advertisers, then simultaneously send them personalized e-mails "through the simple click of a submit button." According to the Web site, the e-mail will: "identify the shows the advertiser sponsored; highlight the specific offensive material in the shows; ask them to stop supporting the offensive programming; and tells them you will not purchase their products or services as long as they support the programming."