Nudity in American television

Nudity in American television has always been a controversial topic. Aside from a few exceptions, nudity in the United States has traditionally not been shown on terrestrial television. On the other hand, cable television has been much less constrained as far as nudity is concerned.

The Public Broadcasting Service, which features nudity in anthropological documentaries as well as some films, was the first network to display national programming that featured frontal female nudity on television. In 1975 (with a rerun in 1986), the PBS National Geographic special Man: The Incredible Machine looked into parts of the human body and included in its opening scenes a fully nude woman in an artist's model pose; probably less for this than the innovative micro- and interior cinematography, this was for more than half a decade the most popular single program broadcast on the network.

The special-event miniseries, Roots on ABC, featured some partial nudity of its cast, usually fleetingly, but more so than other commercial network programming in the US in the 1970s.

Throughout the United States, many metropolitan areas had independent television stations that were not affiliated with any of the national networks and showed programming only to people within their limited broadcast range. During the 1980s, many of these stations experimented with content containing frontal female nudity in movies during prime time. KTLA in Los Angeles, for example, showed an unedited version of the Academy Award-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which featured fully exposed female breasts, between 7:30 and 11 p.m. The channel began the time slot with a video of director Miloš Forman stating that the film was too controversial to be allowed a faithful television broadcast (NBC's earlier broadcast had cut the film to fit the two hours format with commercials), but that KTLA believed that the culture had changed such that a complete broadcast would be tolerated and appreciated. Then, it was followed by a disclaimer that was repeated after each commercial break.

...
Wikipedia