Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
First in a series of articles on prime-time network TV. (Part 2 and Part 3)
April 1998 – While Americans are watching more television than ever before, they are simultaneously becoming deeply concerned about the increasing depravity on TV. In a series of articles beginning this month, AFA Journal will focus on the escalating amount of sex, violence, and profanity on prime-time network television – the people who produce it, the advertisers who sponsor it, and the viewers who watch it.
No end in sight for illicit tv sex
The January 7, 1989, issue of TV Guide ran an article entitled, “TV’s Getting Sexier...How Far Will It Go?” More than nine years later, television’s sellers of sex still haven’t answered TV Guide’s question, even though network TV has already plummeted to sleazy depths undreamed of in 1989.
The opening salvo in that article by Howard Polskin was directed toward the NBC miniseries Favorite Son, which contained a scene in which an actress stripped to her lingerie and invited her lover to tie her on the bed for some kinky sex. Polskin called the scene “the high-water mark of one of network television’s most permissive moments.” A rival network executive called it “a quantum leap forward by NBC.”
Yet the producers of today’s sexed-up servings might consider that “high-water mark” to be low-tide. Following the offer for sex-and-bondage, that NBC scene cut away to avoid showing the actual sex act. Does anyone wonder what would be seen on the screen if Favorite Son were shown today?
Some hints: Last October CBS aired the made-for-TV movie Love in Another Town, in which a divorcee is shown in a graphic sexual encounter with a married (though separated) man. Ironically, the movie received a TVPG under the new television rating system. Also the season premiere of ABC’s controversial NYPD Blue contained what USA Today called “several scorching eyebrow-raisers.” And in a scene at the close of a Brooklyn South (CBS) episode last fall, the camera pans the naked bodies of two lovers in a post-coital embrace. The scene comes as close as possible to exposing the woman’s genital area.
Meanwhile, TV characters seem to be marooned in permanent perversion, as incest, bestiality, homosexuality, genitals, and masturbation are regular subjects for discussion, often to the accompaniment of canned laughter.
In the Media Research Center’s (MRC) 1996-97 study of 92 prime-time entertainment shows on network television, 57% openly promoted, as a major theme, sexual permissiveness – almost always outside the context of marriage. After releasing the results of the study, MRC chairman Brent Bozell said, “In recent years, the topic [of sex] has come to dominate story lines on virtually every network at all hours of the night. No barrier, no tradition, is safe; like an unquenchable thirst, Hollywood cannot stop pushing the envelope of permissiveness.”
TV violence declines – or has it?
According to a study funded by the networks themselves, overall violence on network TV has declined for the third year in a row, but critics say the report provides little to cheer about.
The third annual study, conducted by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, said that half as many primetime network series raised frequent or occasional concerns about violence as was the case in 1995, according to the Los Angeles Times.
However, the increase in programs such as When Animals Attack, Video Justice: Crime Caught on Tape and real-life police shows alarmed the study’s director. He said reality- based specials do not deal responsibly with violence.
Other factors also muddied the study’s impact. For example, rather than counting violent acts, as do most studies on the subject, the UCLA report subjectively judges violent depictions within their context. As a result, the Times said such shows as NYPD Blue, Law & Order, and Homicide actually won praise. Using this standard, the UCLA study found less than 10% of prime-time network TV raised significant concern about violence in the minds of the researchers.
But a survey last fall by the Times showed that viewers do not share the researchers’ confidence. In that poll, 87% of respondents said they believed the material on TV contains more violence than 10 years ago, and 70% said they believed TV violence caused aggressive behavior in those who watch it.
One of the problems with the portrayal of violence on TV is that the consequences of those acts are rarely shown. An analysis of the 1995-96 season by researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara, for example, revealed that three-fourths of violent scenes portray the offenders as escaping criticism and punishment – and demonstrating no remorse for their actions.
And after last year’s UCLA study, Cole said the lowered rates of violence may be the result of the networks switching to shows with more sexual content, although he added that such a topic was “beyond the scope of this report.” If true, such a trend would merely exchange one viewer concern for another. The Times poll also found 87% said they believed the material on TV contains more sex than 10 years ago, with 71% saying they thought the more explicit portrayal of sex and nudity on television encourages immorality.
Don Wildmon, president of American Family Association, said any real drop in violence on television would be welcome news. “Any decline in violence on television is a good thing. And if it has happened, it’s probably the result of public uproar and pressure on advertisers and Congress,” he said.
But Wildmon also said that the fight to protect the culture from TV trash was far from over. “These downward movements have happened in the past, and they were a temporary phenomenon,” he said. “Because as soon as some of the pressure on networks is alleviated, television violence jumps back up. We won’t celebrate until gratuitous and graphic violence are the rare exception.”
Prime-time’s sewer mouth
While bloody corpses pile up and the sex sizzles hotter than ever on TV, what is heard coming out of the mouths of characters on television is increasingly colored blue and leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of viewers.
The foul language flooding the airwaves was once forbidden. Carol Altieri, vice president of program practices at CBS, said, “The boundaries have been changing and continuously evolving.”
And how. The Parents Television Council (PTC) issued a report last year that examined the prime-time offerings during the February sweeps period on the six major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB, and UPN). Not only had vulgar language increased 42% between 1995 and 1997, but exactly one-third of the programs monitored contained profanity.
Even more disturbing, the PTC study focused only on programs shown during the so-called “family hour” – between 8 and 9 p.m. (ET). In fact, PTC’s report said, “Of the 86 family-hour shows rated PG, meaning they’re supposedly appropriate for everyone except young children,… 49% included obscenities.”
Although most words considered to be profane have already made their way onto network TV, there may be even rougher seas ahead. ABC entertainment chief Jamie Tarses said there are now “no absolutes” regarding standards of appropriate language. “The bar’s always moving,” she said.
Does that mean that the infamous F-word may be coming to network television some day? Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University who heads up that school’s Center for the Study of Popular Television, says absolutely. “I don’t think we’re very far away at all," he said. 
Warner series exploits sex, teens
Note: AFA will not be monitoring the controversial Warner Brothers network series Dawson’s Creek. However because of the large number of calls we have received about the show, we are including the following synopsis drawn from various media reviews.
The new dramatic series Dawson’s Creek focuses on four teenagers growing up in a Boston suburb, but what the teens focus on is one thing and one thing only: sex. And Dawson’s Creek promises to enthusiastically push the envelope to new and, as of yet, undetermined limits.
Early story lines include a high school boy having an affair with his thirty-something-year-old teacher, and a teen who not only walks in on his parents having sex on the living-room table, but also discovers that his mother is having an affair with a co-worker. The raw and raunchy dialogue regularly revolves around breasts, the size of male genitals, and masturbation. Little wonder that a review in Newsweek by Rick Marin said the show “makes Melrose Place look like Petticoat Junction.”
Ed Martin, in his review of the drama for USA Today, said, “At the very least, it will further break down prime-time’s rapidly crumbling content barrier and trash another taboo or two. These young characters discuss sexual matters with a frequency not heard on a broadcast TV series before.”
That frequency is not only disappointing and exploitative, but unrealistic, said columnist John Leo in U.S. News & World Report. “In the three episodes available to reviewers so far, nobody is interested in hobbies, learning, sports, politics, religion, social life, the neighborhood, or any kind of work, unless the work involves movies or TV,” he said. “A high interest in sex at age 15 is hardly unusual, but this is obsessive – the four main characters rarely talk about anything else.”
