Which is worse, obscene or annoying?

This morning’s Advertising Week session on branded entertainment and the FCC had plenty to keep clients and their agencies awake at night. The usual suspects—food (obesity), indecency (Super Bowl), violence (children), pharmaceuticals (too much), alcohol (youngsters)—were paraded for the listening pleasure of an audience already worrying about the alleged impending death of traditional advertising. Which raised a question: Why is this Republican administration, which advertisers had every reason to believe would be more hands-off than Clinton’s, so active in the area of ad regulation? Ed