Opinions are like noses - - everybody has one. Let's take a look at some thoughts on the FCC's omnibus indecency ruling last week. In summary: * Industry organization TV Watch charged that in large part the FCC was caving in to a small percentage of Americans represented by very active groups, usurping from parents the right to determine what their children watch on TV. * Morality in Media and the Parents Television Council praised the action, and think the FCC could've done more. * CCA praised the moves and asked for Congress to get on the stick and approve higher fines. * CCVM, an organization representing the creative community, called the indecency rules in general and this ruling in particular vague and arbitrary.

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* TV Watch Executive Director Jim Dyke: "Today's FCC decision and dissenting comments to some of those decisions reflects the challenge hundreds of millions of parents face each day - - what television is appropriate for them and their family. While a small group of activists want the government to enforce their preferences on which programs adult Americans can view during their leisure time - - the vast majority of Americans prefer to decide for themselves what to watch on TV. Parents have the information to make informed decisions about what their children watch on TV and the tools to enforce those decisions. We should let parents make those individual decisions instead of allowing special interests to pressure the government into choosing for all of us."

* Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media: "The FCC actions are constitutional because our nation's founding fathers viewed the First Amendment within a framework of ordered liberty - - not as a license to pollute public spaces with indecent talk and pictures - - and because the Supreme Court (FCC v. Pacifica) has already rejected the argument that enforcement of the law constitutes impermissible 'censorship.' I also think the FCC continues to dismiss valid indecency complaints because its definitions of 'indecent' and 'profane' are too narrow and because FCC confuses indecency with lewdness. The law prohibits 'indecent' language, and content can be 'indecent' without being 'lewd.'"

* Parents Television Council Executive Director Tim Winter: "We applaud the FCC for upholding the substantial fine against CBS for Janet Jackson's indecent exposure during the 2004 Super Bowl, for finding the graphic sexual content in The Surreal Life 2 to be indecent, and for clarifying whether utterances of the F-word and S-words are indecent. Such material does not belong on broadcast television when millions of children are in the viewing audience. Finally, we wholeheartedly endorse the FCC actions to protect Spanish-speaking children and families from indecent broadcasts. The public airwaves belong to all Americans without regard to their primary language."

* Jonathan Rintels, Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media: "Today's FCC indecency decisions put creative, challenging, controversial, non-homogenized broadcast television programming at risk. These decisions illustrate the significant problems with the Commission's enforcement of its indecency rules. They are vague, arbitrary, insufficiently attuned to the context and quality of the program, and bear no relation to 'contemporary community standards,' as the Commission's own rules require. They substitute the Commissioners' creative and artistic choices for those made by media artists. And they will undoubtedly result in increasing amounts of self-censorship of protected speech by media artists and broadcasters. The Commission correctly notes that it may regulate indecent material 'only with due respect for the high value our Constitution places on freedom and choice in what people may say and hear.' That 'due respect' is not evident in these decisions."

* Roberta Combs, Christian Coalition of America: "Congress needs to give the FCC even greater weapons to go against out-of-control broadcasters such as CBS. I urge the Senate leadership to finally bring to the Senate floor for a vote, the "Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act" which passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. House of Representatives by a margin of 389-38 last April. There is no excuse for a delay in the Senate floor vote now that Senate hearings have been completed."