Washington (CNN) -- The Supreme Court appeared ready to give government regulators the continuing authority to regulate profanity and sexual content on broadcast television after a lively hour of arguments Tuesday.





The justices and lawyers all stayed polite, not actually using any obscene words, preferring the legally acceptable "f-bomb" or "s-word" to describe the controversial content at issue in the high-stakes free speech dispute.





The court will decide whether the Federal Communications Commission may constitutionally enforce its policies on "fleeting expletives" and scenes of nudity on television programs, both live and scripted. The agency had imposed hefty fines on broadcasters.





In many televised instances, "one cannot tell what is indecent and what isn't" said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "It's the appearance of arbitrariness about how the FCC is defining indecency in concrete situations," she added.





But with so many programming choices on broadcast, cable and satellite TV, "All the government is asking for is a few (broadcast) channels where you can say -- they are not going to hear the s-word, the f-word. They are not going to see nudity," Chief Justice John Roberts said.





The court's ruling, which will come in a few months, could establish important First Amendment guidelines over explicit content on the airwaves.





The Justice Department had filed an appeal, and helpfully provided the justices with a DVD of a 2003 episode of the now-canceled "NYPD Blue" on ABC in which a naked woman was shown. The content of that program is central to the ongoing legal dispute. Lawyer Seth Waxman representing ABC said the FCC's tough action against the network was "a shot out of the blue."





A federal appeals court last year for a second time struck down the government policies, concluding they were vague and inconsistently applied. Pending fines against the broadcasters were dismissed. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are all parties in the case.





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





The policy 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."





Justice Stephen Breyer dryly noted the language from the two women "seems to be naturally part of their vocabulary." That drew laughter in the courtroom.





The CBS complaint involved dirty language on "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 violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, ruling only on the agency's enforcement power. The justices ordered the free-speech aspect to be reviewed again by a New York-based federal appeals court, which subsequently ruled in favor of the broadcasters.





The Justice Department, in its new appeal, lumped both the expletives and nudity cases together, saying the court should decide the free speech questions as one.





Explicit language is heard with greater, albeit varying, frequency on cable television, the Internet, and satellite radio, which do not use public airwaves. But the federal government is charged with responding to viewer complaints of "indecent" language and images on broadcast television and radio, which is subject to greater regulation.





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