Once upon a time, television was a clean, safe, predictable, one-way experience. Ed Sullivan appeared on Sunday nights; he couldn’t be taped or TiVo’d, so you just watched and shared the sugar-coated moment. Husbands and wives slept in separate beds, women never got pregnant, and black people rarely had professional jobs. Parental controls for sex, violence or dirty language weren’t necessary.

An 8-year-old could watch anything.

Now television is a wide-open medium no longer subject to the constraints of time or taste, where any program is available anytime. “Leave It to Beaver” has been replaced by raunchy beer commercials, bared breasts and bisexuals. No wonder some parents view television as an unwanted predator, beaming a coarsened popular culture right into the living room.

And no wonder the U.S. House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly approved a 10-fold increase in the fines levied on broadcasters who cross the line on sex and language. The Senate will surely follow suit: Who these days can be in favor of smut on the public airwaves?

It’s hard to whip up any First Amendment fury over the “right” to curse in front of kids.

These steep penalties – half a million dollars for indecency, plus a “three strikes and you’re out” provision that could lead to revoking licenses – would get the attention of the broadcast industry, and they should. This is obviously not a group capable of policing itself.

But the viewing public deserves as much blame for the sorry state of American television as the shock jocks and sex artists. After the 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction,” 500,000 people wrote angry letters to government officials about the rise of lewd sexuality and vulgarity on television.

Then viewers made “Desperate Housewives” the most talked-about new show on TV.

Parents moan about the gratuitous sex and violence on shows aired on what was once the sacrosanct “family hour,” but how many allow their kids to watch that stuff? Nearly two-thirds of children in this country have a television in their bedroom, and I doubt it got there because they saved their allowance.

I’m not happy about the grand and vague new powers about to be assumed by the unelected members of the Federal Communications Commission to decide on the 2005 definition of “decency.” If there’s censorship, it should start and end at home. Parents and all consumers ought to have the ability to filter what passes for entertainment, just as we choose which movies to see and books to read.

Much of that empowerment exists, however, and few are using it. The “V-chip” allows parents to block certain shows, and all new televisions include technology to block entire channels, but those weapons seem to be consigned to the sidelines in this particular episode of the culture war.

It requires no technology whatever to have only one television in the house, in a common room – the easiest way yet to monitor what children watch.

Besides, edgy material has its uses. The real-life controversies portrayed on TV may make grown-ups uncomfortable, but they also make for great conversation-starters with otherwise reluctant children. A reader from Cherry Hill, N.J., used the recent allegations that the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants was “gay” to talk to her 12-year-old son about homosexuality. The sweeps-month lesbian kiss on Fox’s wildly popular “The O.C.” prompted a surprising debate around our dinner table about bisexuality.

Television ought to be something that is mastered and enjoyed, not feared. Legislation pending in Congress to require cable companies to offer programming a la carte – so that you pay only for what you want – would further empower viewers and ought to be seriously debated, despite the industry’s objections.

“When all is said and done,” writes Peter Gutmann, a Washington lawyer specializing in broadcast regulation, “the real issue has nothing to do with freedom, the First Amendment or the FCC. Rather, it’s all about responsibility and conscience.”

The conscience of those who create television content, and the responsibility of those who consume it.