Falls Church, Virginia (CNN) -- It's a Tuesday night at Nell and Matt Dillard's suburban Washington home, and the family of four is watching "Glee," a scripted Fox television program.





Ninety seconds into the comedy, one of the teenage female characters makes mention of Asian men and their sexual prowess. Nell Dillard immediately looks over at her 13- and 11-year-old boys watching next to her, but she sees no immediate reaction they have gotten the veiled sexually suggestive "joke."





"What's up with that," says father Matt Dillard, shaking his head at what he's just heard. "Why throw that in this show?"





Such are challenges many families face when trying to control the video material their children receive from a range of content providers: TV, radio, Internet, mobile devices, and interactive video games.





Now the Supreme Court is poised to take a fresh look at a key aspect of multimedia regulation -- "indecent" material aired on the broadcast networks during the supposedly "family friendly" prime-time hours of 8 to 10 p.m. Oral arguments in this key free-speech dispute will be held Tuesday.





At issue is whether the Federal Communications Commission may constitutionally enforce its policies on "fleeting expletives" and scenes of nudity on prime-time television programs, both live and scripted. The agency had imposed hefty fines on broadcasters for separate incidents. An expected ruling by summer could establish important First Amendment guidelines over expressive content on the airwaves.





A range of competing interests are at stake: Free speech versus censorship; regulation versus responsibility; art versus indecency.





For the Dillards, the specific questions raised by this appeal are just the tip of digital iceberg.





"It's not (like) when we were kids, when there was three networks and PBS," Matt Dillard told CNN one recent evening. "We've had to do the controlling over anything coming over a screen -- a TV screen, computer screen, telephone screen -- anything where there is video content or streaming. We lump all that together. ...





"It feels like the Wild West out there, where there is no rating system. We're not asking for a clampdown on free speech. They (media) have every right to that. We're just looking for the tools to help us make the best decisions for our kids."





The Case





ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are all parties in the case challenging the FCC regulations. A federal appeals court in 2010 for a second time struck down the government's policies, concluding they were vague and inconsistently applied. Pending fines against the broadcasters were dismissed. The government then appealed to the high court.





Controversial words and images have been aired in scripted and unscripted instances on all the major over-the-air networks during the past decade, when the FCC began considering a stronger, no-tolerance policy.





The changes became known as the Golden Globes rule, for singer Bono's 2003 acceptance speech at the live awards show on NBC, where he uttered the phrase "Really, really, f---ing brilliant."





The commission specifically cited celebrities Cher and Nicole Richie for potty-mouth language in the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards, which aired live on Fox. Richie, in an apparent scripted moment said, "Have you ever tried to get cow s--t out of a Prada purse? It's not so f---ing simple."





The complaint against ABC involved "NYPD Blue," a scripted police drama, and the CBS complaint involved "The Early Show," a news and interview program.





The high court two years ago ruled in favor of the FCC on the issue of "fleeting expletives," concluding federal regulators have the authority to clamp down on broadcast TV networks airing isolated cases of profanity.





The court, however, refused at the time to decide whether the commission's policy violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, ruling only on its enforcement power. The justices ordered the free-speech aspect to be reviewed again by a New
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