From WNYKKNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Well, it's been an eventful week for network television, beginning with the fallout on Capitol Hill over the Super Bowl halftime show.

Mel Carmesan, president of CBS parent Viacom, found himself before a House committee testifying about his own network's shock and surprise over Janet Jackson's breakaway brassiere. Nobody at CBS, nobody at Viacom, nobody at MTV, and certainly nobody at the NFL knew what was going to happen.

But nobody on the House Telecommunications Subcommittee was buying it, New Mexico Republican Heather Wilson.

You knew what you were doing.

You knew what kind of entertainment you're selling.

And you wanted us all to be a buzz here in this room and on the playground in my kid's school,

because it improves your ratings, it improves your market share, and it lines your pockets.

Disgusted with a broadcast culture that continues to define deviancy down,

California Republican Christopher Cox suggested making broadcast television a raunch-free zone.

I will defend to my last breath, your right to cuss, and use foul language and run around naked

with forest animals, if that's what suits you.

But don't impose it on people who don't want it or on our kids who may want it, but who deserve far better.

For the moment, the regulation of content appears to be little more than an idle threat to the networks,

whose immediate punishment seems to be limited to an FCC

fine. A more compelling threat, however, may not be from the government at all. Last week, the Walt

Disney Company, owner of ABC, ESPN, and many other media properties, found itself under assault

from another media corporation, the cable giant Comcast.

The Philadelphia-based company, which commands more than 20 million cable subscribers,

launched a $54 billion attempted buyout of Disney, raising the specter of still more media consolidation.

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