The FCC is frequently guilty of blindly adhering to the interests of entertainment conglomerates, having permitted a level of media consolidation which has been devastating to the television industry as a whole.

Yet whenever they strong arm major media companies, it’s for all the wrong reasons. This prudish $1.4 million penalty against ABC for a shot of a nudity on a 2003 episode of “NYPD Blue” is unreasonable and silly.

There I said it.

Both are serialized, broadcast network action-dramas where an isolated likeable group of people struggle for survival following a catastrophe they don’t understand.

ABC’s “Lost” is the sexy one.

An attractive international cast that maintain perfectly white teeth after being stranded for months on an island. After three seasons, the show is beloved for its Big Twists and Sneaky Clues that jerk the narrative this way and that, like shiny fishing bait dangled in front of viewers with attention spans too short to remember that a couple ago what they’re now being told wouldn’t make any sense.

CBS’s “Jericho” is pure Midwest morality tale.

The group of scruffy small-town characters on last season’s “Jericho” debut have gradually devolved into desperate survivalists — shell-shocked and stunned at the humanity draining from their Kansas community following a nuclear terrorist attack.

As Harry Potter fans know, during a game of Quidditch the player known as the Seeker desperately tries to capture a small flying ball called the Golden Snitch. When the Seeker succeeds, he scores a whopping 150 points for his team and the game ends.

Meanwhile, there’s all this other frenetic and suspiciously pointless Quidditch-related activity going on. Aside from the Seekers, each team has six others players (dubbed Chasers, Beaters and a Keeper) who fight over an entirely different ball (the Quaffle) and try to get that ball through small hoops at ends of the field.

If they succeed, they score a mere 10 points and the game continues.

Author J.K. Rowling established these wildly unpractical rules for her alleged team sport in her first Potter book and she likely has no regrets. Since the Seeker has the awesome power to (A) end the game and (B) effectively score 15 goals at once, Rowling’s narrative would have to bend over backwards to allow any character to ever take center stage during a Quidditch match except the Seeker – which, naturally, is the position played by her story’s protagonist Harry Potter.

Kiefer Sutherland was released from a Glendale jail today after serving 48 days for a DUI. All the stories declare the actor was a “model prisoner.”

Did he keep his cell extra tidy?

Volunteer to organize books in the library?

Share his portion of tater tots with fellow inmates?

Barely make a sound when he was probed for contraband?

Please.

Sutherland is a wealthy actor from a respected Hollywood family who spent less than two months in suburban jail.

How tough was it, really, to follow the rules?

This isn’t a “24” fight scene battling five actors playing terrorists in a warehouse that took three days to choreograph.

It’s sitting quietly in a cell.

He can do that.

As a bonus, he also did some laundry.

So much unsaid in this NY Daily News article about TLC’s Paige Davis returning as host of “Trading Spaces.”

Let’s recap: TLC’s “Trading,” based on a UK reality format, launched in 2000 with host Alex McLeod. The show was popular from the start, but in the second season, McLeod was replaced by Davis.

By 2002, the show had become the most successful program TLC had ever aired. “Trading” launched a ton of knock offs across a slew of basic cable networks in two genre directions – shows about decorating/houses, and shows about makeovers.

TLC over-stuffed their schedule with as much “Trading” as they could produce and, like ABC over-airing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” the short-sighted strategy blew up in their faces.

The ratings for “Trading” crashed in 2004, dragging TLC down along with it.

That same year, Davis was photographed like this (NSFW), trading the space inside her panties for fistfuls of cash while stripping at a fundraiser.

Then she was fired in January, 2005.

Was that fair?

Well, it certainly wasn’t her fault the ratings crashed. Audiences weren’t rejecting Davis, they were weary of watching the same show every couple hours.

It was her fault that she got her thong stuffed by eager hordes of men in a New York club but, hey, it was for charity, and the network should have been more forgiving. We’re all grown ups here in the home improvement aisle, right?

Welcome back Paige.

The directors have concluded their negotiations with new union contract in hand like confident cats, stretching lazily in the sun and saying to writers, “See how easy that was? How fast and simple? Now why can’t you do that?”

It makes the guys holding picket signs look like ineffective chumps.

Writers are out there striking and chanting and denying the world any more new episodes of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” while the directors sauntered in and made a groundbreaking deal that got them a bunch of new media windings.

For those who have been missing “Deal or No Deal” this month, the NBC game show stalwart has been embarking on a “million dollar mission” to award a contestant $1 million. Each episode where a player fails to win the top prize, another $1 million suitcase is added to the board so that, sooner or later, even the gleeful, math-challenged chipmonk contestants of “Deal” will finally be able to stumble into big bucks.

Since this ratings-boosting stunt started, contestants have lined up to “No Deal Howie!” their way to record-setting six figure offers … then “No Deal Howie!” their way right back down to earn relative squat.

NBC tapped professional in-house suck ups Nancy O’Dell and Billy “yes we’re related and equally smug and shallow in our chosen professions” Bush to host the aborted, downsized, writers struck Golden Globes.

Capitalizing on the success of it’s Golden Globe nominated series Mad Men, AMC is rolling out a new series Breaking Bad which premieres January 20.

The show centers on Walt White (Bryan Cranston from Malcom in the Middle) a high school chemistry teacher who, in the midst of a mid-life crisis is diagnosed with terminal cancer and turns to a life of crime in order to provide for his wife and special needs son.