Standing Guard Over Decency Standards

As an ambitious Harvard University law student in the early 1950s, Alfred Schneider aspired to be a courtroom judge. That never happened. No black robe, no gavel, no bench.

Instead, Schneider, now 75, went on to become a remarkably powerful judge of an entirely different sort. From 1960 to 1990, Schneider was in the cultural trenches as chief censor for the ABC television network.

During those three decades of fast-changing tastes and social mores, Schneider and his staff judged what sensitive material would make it into millions of U.S. living rooms and what would be banned.

In “The Gatekeeper: My 30 Years as a TV Censor,” recently published by Syracuse University Press, Schneider takes readers into the tumultuous world of a major network’s broadcast standards and practices department. He spoke about his career by telephone from his office in New York City, where he works part time as a consultant.

Question: What do you predict will be the next taboos to fall on network TV?

Answer: Golly, are there any more to fall? I think you’ve practically seen it all, to one extent or another. It’s a matter of degree.

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Q: Tell me about your dispute with the producers of “thirtysomething” [in the late 1980s] over scenes involving homosexuality. You overruled a scripted kiss between two gay men.

A: That was clearly something that would be highly offensive to a good portion of the audience. It was before the time that we had open hearings on the activities of a president, a discussion of oral sex on the air. The American audience at that point in time, I did not think, was prepared to deal with the physical expression of the act of homosexuality, be it only in terms of kissing each other.

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Q: Is that a decision that you regret?

A: I don’t know if I regret the decision made at the time. I question whether I would still make it today.

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Q: Did you feel that your job as a censor was to reflect the public’s sensibility more than to help shape it?

A: If you want to put percentages in, I think it was 60-40: 60 to reflect, 40 to help shape.

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Q: The word “Mafia” was banned from ABC entertainment until the early ‘90s. What was the story behind that?

A: Well, it originated with “The Untouchables,” and the concern that the Italian American community had with the portrayal of criminality in “The Untouchables” and the reference to Italians and the Mafia. A number of prominent [New York City judges] came to visit with us and said that this was hurting their children. . . . They made their case, along with several Italian American public-interest groups.

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Q: How did you feel about just banning a word outright like that?

A: I think it was a trade-off of respecting the concerns and interests of others against the creative community’s ability to find another word. They could use the word “organized crime.” They could use “Cosa Nostra.”

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Q: Why was the term “Mafia” a problem but not “Cosa Nostra”?

A: The objection was to the use of the word “Mafia,” and we never got into the use of the word “Cosa Nostra.” It may be they felt that it was the Mafia appellation that had the offensive connotation, whereas “Cosa Nostra” was not that well-known to many people.

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Q: How many other words like “Mafia” were banned that people might not know about?

A: Other than scatological or four-letter words, not that many. I can’t think of any. Racial slurs, “bastards,” “bitches.” Other than that, “Mafia” is the only one I can recall.

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Q: You wrote about your belief that “idea placement” is more egregious than product placement in TV. What are the more egregious examples of idea placement that you witnessed?

A: Sometime during the Nixon administration, I think, was the first time it occurred. . . . Government officials would call down and say, “Could we introduce story lines that would influence people to realize that drugs were harmful?” And I said, “No, I think the story lines have to come out of the creative community’s own suggestions.” If you start now having everyone saying that this is a story line that has to be put in, then you’re controlling what goes on the air, whether it be good or bad.

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Q: What do you think are the toughest issues for your counterparts at the networks these days?

A: I think the issues are the same: language, sexuality, violence, truth. The question is how they deal with them. The line between entertainment and news has become more fuzzy . . . the docudrama and the whole question of how far you mix fact and fiction.

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Q: Did you allow any scenes or language, for example, that you now regret in retrospect?

A: The one [decision] I think I still debate most is the rejection of “All in the Family” when that came to ABC. We weren’t prepared to take it. Management wasn’t prepared to take it. . . . Even though I still feel that I would debate the question of whether bigotry is reinforced or exposed, which is the debate I had with Norman Lear in “All in the Family.” I still think it made a major contribution to the culture [via CBS] and the changes in television. I regret not seeing my way clear to say, “Yes, I think we should put it on.”

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Q: What was your proudest moment as a censor, or gatekeeper?

A: I guess the fact that we were able to get “The Day After” on the air after all [in 1983]. . . . The fact we were able to deal with what it would be like if there were to be a nuclear explosion.

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Q: You discuss your mandate to find a way to get sensitive subjects on the air with the popular movies of the week. How did the whole phenomenon of movies of the week change your job?

A: You dealt with more controversial issue material. The subject matter of movies of the week brought up a lot of issues that society was dealing with, whether it was homosexuality, how to cope with incest, euthanasia, language.

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Q: Now that you’re retired, can you watch television without the eyes of a censor?

A: Never. . . . That’s an occupational hazard.