As the Supreme Court prepares to ponder 'fleeting expletives' on live television and the FCC fines Fox and ABC for what it deems indecency in prime time, CBS is getting ready to launch 'Swingtown,' a drama about wife-swapping in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, on cable, Showtime's ultrasteamy 'The Tudors,' complete with full frontal nudity, returns Sunday. On HBO, even John and Abigail Adams got a (chaste) sex scene.

With groups determined to clean up television on one side and advocates for free speech on the other, the battle lines over appropriate content are drawn more deeply than ever. The problem, as always, is that only those on the extreme edges of the argument can agree on what 'appropriate' means. To be decent, and thus appropriate, must all television be suitable for viewers of all ages? Is violence OK, but not four-letter words or vice versa? Is sexual innuendo that might go over a child's head more acceptable than showing some skin? And with a ratings system and the V-chip in place for more than a decade, shouldn't parents take responsibility for what their kids watch? Anybody offended by just about anything on television looks back fondly at the days when as best they recall a parent could plop the tots in front of the TV with no worries. What, they ask, ever happened to TV's 'family hour'? In fact, the family hour, when ABC, CBS and NBC (under pressure from the FCC) agreed not to schedule programs with sex, adult language and violence in the first hour of prime time, lasted less than two years in the 1970s before a federal judge threw it out on First Amendment grounds.

Still, nobody would disagree that it's a long way from the days when TV's Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in twin beds to 'The Bachelor,' in which a woman at this season's meet-and-greet cocktail party removed her underwear and stuffed it into the bachelor's pocket.

Losing audience to cable and satellite, free of FCC regulations and now in 87 percent of U.S. households, the broadcast networks continue to push their own envelopes with more adult shows, arguing that about 60 percent of U.S. households include no children. Not so fast, argue advocates for clean TV, armed with technology that allows them to launch mass complaints via websites that detail every questionable scene.

The battle, waged even before George Carlin listed his 'Seven Dirty Words' in 1978, has escalated since singer Janet Jackson's breast was briefly exposed at halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl. The FCC had previously been lenient on 'fleeting expletives' heard during live events but began cracking down under Commissioner Kevin Martin, who became chairman in 2005.

The case that will be reviewed by the Supreme Court this year involves expletives at the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards and the 2002 Golden Globes. A federal appeals court sided with Fox in a lawsuit against the FCC; that is the ruling the Supreme Court will consider.

The FCC's new tough stance on content doesn't stop with language. Last month, the agency fined ABC and its stations more than $1.2 million over a 5-year-old episode of 'NYPD Blue' that showed a woman naked from the back. Also last month, Fox and its stations were slapped with a $91,000 fine over an episode of 'Married by America,' a reality show that aired in 2003 and showed strippers at bachelor parties. Both networks are appealing the fines, as is CBS, which was fined after the Super Bowl incident.

Groups advocating family-friendly TV hope that the fines and the Supreme Court's ultimate ruling will send a message to broadcasters to clean up their act. 'Millions of families are grateful that the Supreme Court has decided to review this indecency case,' said the Parents Television Council, dedicated to 'responsible entertainment.' 'Such harsh, unedited profanity is unacceptable for broadcast over the publicly owned airwaves when children are likely to be watching.' Free-speech advocates warn that censorship will be chilling to the creative process; they point out that a fear of fines led PBS to edit and bleep the Ken Burns documentary series 'The War,' about World War II. 'We trust that the highest court in the land will determine that the highest authority on family television viewing is parents,' said TV Watch, which opposes government control of television.

Both sides say they hope the FCC will issue clearer guidelines so that everybody can identify the line that can't be crossed. But neither side seems likely to be satisfied with a compromise. At a shareholders meeting of the Walt Disney Co. this month, Parents Television Council president Tim Winter said that the Disney Channel and Disney movies such as 'High School Musical' and 'Enchanted' fill 'a massive entertainment need for millions of families.' Then he went on to complain about the ABC series 'Ugly Betty' because of its sexual content and 'foul language,' cited in detail. ABC is owned by Disney.

The Creative Coalition, formed in 1989 by people in the entertainment industry including the late Christopher Reeve, acknowledged in a statement that not all television is appropriate for children. 'The notion, however, that my kids, your kids or our society as a whole will be better off if some bunch of Washington bureaucrats just had more power to censor our television programming is preposterous,' executive director Robin Bronk wrote. 'With a bit of common sense, we can both protect our children and the free artistic expression that is at the heart of the American experience.'