"For years, conventional wisdom in Hollywood had it that 'sex sells,' and therefore, the more of it, the better," explained Brent Bozell, founder and president of the PTC. "But rating data and survey results prove that's not necessarily true."
Bozell, who is also president of the Media Research Center and CNSNews.com, said not only do parents not want their children exposed to sexual content - they don't want to see it themselves.
He cited a 2001 Family Circle survey in which 93 percent of the respondents said that they "had turned off the TV or changed channels during a program because of sexual content." Another survey, released by the Kaiser Family Foundation the same year, indicated that 80 percent of parents were concerned about their children's "overexposure to sex and violence."
"Our studies showed that every broadcast network, except for the relatively small WB, has experienced a decrease in sexual content during the 'family hour,' and every network but WB and UPN has shown improvement during the second hour of prime time programming," he said. "Overall, sexual content is down for the first two hours of prime time.
"This is a huge victory for families and," Bozell added," a huge victory for Hollywood."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who has led Senate efforts to encourage greater FCC enforcement of obscenity laws, said he is pleased the networks appear to be responding to the demands of consumers.
"Families have been crying out for a long period of time and saying, 'Look, don't make me have to fight the television to raise my children,'" he said. "They're very offended by having to do that constantly and having to constantly be vigilant."
Brownback noted that new medical technologies allow researchers to actually observe which portions of a child's brain are active while watching television. Initial studies show that children's bodies react to viewing violent or sexual content in much the same way they would if they were physically part of the action.
"In other words, when a child sees a violent scene on television or in a movie, they immediately go to a 'fight or flight' mode in their body, physically, and they store that information for a long period of time," he explained. "The early studies are stunning about what impact these things have on a child."
The Kansas Republican said more than a thousand behavioral studies have linked young people viewing sexual situations on television with tendencies toward promiscuity.
"Of young women who watch as little as 22 hours a month of prime time television, they are more likely to endorse a recreational view of sex than young women who watch less television," Brownback quoted. "Teenagers who had just watched TV dramas full of sexual content rated descriptions of casual sexual encounters less negatively than teenagers who had not viewed any sexual content.
"Children who are exposed to sexual material in media become sexually active earlier in life," he concluded. "This has physical and psychological consequences."
Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He believes the PTC survey is proof that "the TV networks that have kidnapped and brainwashed our children for a generation are beginning to loosen their grip."
He agreed with Brownback that portrayals of "consequence-free, relationship-free sexual behavior" can have a serious and negative effect both on the attitudes and the behavior of children.
"Television producers, writers and directors have relentlessly exploited sex to bolster ratings, stretching the limits ever further, with oblivious disregard for the impact on impressionable, young children," Greenwood charged. "Those who care about the welfare of children and who understand the threats posed by certain kinds of media portrayals have long struggled to find a balance of free speech and social responsibility."
Greenwood complimented the PTC for using viewer pressure against advertisers to influence programming content. Bozell said that strategy makes it unlikely that the networks will look at the PTC report and become complacent about the issue.
"I think they are looking at it from a standpoint of dollars and cents," he said. "I don't think that the networks, when they see the audience coming in the direction of family programs, are going to reject them."
"While there is less sex on TV now than in 1998, what's left is often far more explicit," he explained.
During the 'family hour' in 1998, the PTC found that 84 percent of all sexual content fell into the category of innuendo. But in the 2002 survey, that number had fallen to 62 percent. The second hour of prime time appears to be even worse. In 1998, that time slot's sexual content was 85 percent innuendo. But that figure has now dropped to 47 percent, with the remaining percentage devoted to "references to masturbation, oral sex, adultery, pornography and the like."
"There's still gratuitous sexual content on television," Bozell said. "No one should rest until the innocence of childhood is being fully protected."
To continue the progress reported this year, Bozell said parents and other concerned citizens will have to remain active, contacting networks and advertisers both about programs they disapprove of and those they enjoy. He said the Federal Communications Commission will also "have to come out of its coma" and start enforcing broadcast indecency laws against television stations.
"If the networks thought for one minute that the FCC was serious about decency enforcement," Bozell argued, "there's no question that we'd see instances of sexual content on prime time television fall even further."
"My assessment is [that] the FCC does nothing now," Brownback said.
"The FCC has a budget of $287 million a year," Greenwood explained. "From that budget, they have a total of, I think, five investigators, and that's for all kinds of investigations that have to do with the FCC.
"It's a lack of the FCC's willingness to dedicate resources to monitoring television," he added. "They need to turn on the televisions at the FCC and see what's going on."
Bozell noted that, from the conception of the FCC, the regulatory agency has never officially declared a television program to be "indecent."
"Which is another way of saying that, in the history of the FCC, it has found everything to be decent," he charged. "It is the only institution in America that holds that opinion."
Brownback said he would work to get new data from brain-mapping studies to the FCC commissioners so they could see first-hand the proof that television sex and violence has a negative effect on children. Greenwood said he would work to streamline the FCC's complaint process, possibly eliminating the requirement that parents submit videotaped copies and transcripts of shows they deem offensive when filing complaints.
The full study, including the statistical index, is available on the Parents Television Council website.
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