Parents Television Council President Tim Winter wants Scream Queens off the air — or at least stripped of ad dollars from big-time sponsor McDonald’s. Winter said the Ryan Murphy program’s “very concerning content” is not appropriate for even its TV-14 rating — and he is disgusted by the fact that Fox debuted the series at 8 p.m. ET, which made for a 7 o’clock Central Time premiere.
The Parents Television Council says Sunday’s Family Guy episode, in which a character was on trial for statutory rape, violated indecency standards and wants people to complain to the FCC.
Exclusives
The Parents Television Council today released a report finding that 99% of broadcast television shows about families contain some form of adult content (sex, violence, and profanity). “Parents often assume that TV shows about families are ‘safe’ viewing choices, but our study shows that families who watch TV shows about families will be barraged by sex and profanity — even on TV-PG-rated shows. This is unacceptable,” said PTC President Tim Winter.
Today, the Parents Television Council released its annual list of “Best and Worst TV Advertisers,” which catalogues companies based on the television content they chose to underwrite with their media dollars over the past year.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Fox network isn’t responding to suggestions that it edit its upcoming crossover episode of “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” to remove a joke where the […]
After the Parents Television Council urged MTV to avoid a repeat of last year’s twerk-heavy Miley Cyrus performance at this year’s Video Music Awards, the family-values watchdog group seemed mostly pleased with Sunday night’s less explicit content. But the PTC did express concerns about the way women were portrayed during the show and the inconsistency of featuring positive messages mixed with scantily clad dancers.
In a letter from PTC president Tim Winter to Janet Borelli, SVP standards and practices at MTV Networks/Viacom Media Networks, and copied to the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board, the watchdog group urges the network to avoid a repeat of last year’s “sexually charged and otherwise inappropriate content” that included a performance by Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke.
The watchdog group condemns the fast-food chain’s sponsorship of the VH1 program and recommends patronizing Wendy’s as an alternative “until McDonald’s returns to being a responsible advertiser.”
The group says scenes in the June 29 show at 9/8 p.m. ET/CT “constitute a violation of the broadcast indecency law due to the patently offensive sexual content airing when children are likely to be in the audience. It is even more troubling that CBS chose to rate the episode as appropriate for 14-year-old children.”
Parents Television Council President Tim Winter: “Today we call for greater responsibility by the corporations whose media dollars underwrite some of the most harmful material on broadcast television. These companies have sponsored programs that routinely deliver explicit content.”
The Parents Television Council is calling out Fox Broadcasting for rating an episode of The Following that showed a young woman having her throat brutally and graphically slit open as appropriate for children as young as 14. The episode aired as early as 8 p.m. C/MT and was given a TV-14 (Parents Strongly Cautioned) rating instead of what PTC feels would have been a more appropriate TV-MA (Mature Audience Only) rating.
The watchdog group is urging its members to submit indecency complaints against the Fox comedy for an episode it says featured”an implied depiction of and references to semen, and references to masturbation.”
The Parents Television Council took aim at the television and movie industries on Wednesday, calling for a complete overhaul of the industries’ ratings systems and blasting the industries’ lack of progress in reducing media violence.
Scenes of stabbings, shootings, rape, decapitation and mutilation invariably received a TV-14 “parents strongly cautioned” rating on network TV, according to the Parents Television Council study released today. But similar fare on cable typically was given the most stringent label, TV-MA for mature audiences only, researchers for the media watchdog group found.
The Parents Television Council has released its annual Best and Worst TV Advertisers List, which focuses on companies that sponsor more family-friendly TV programming and those that do not. This year’s list with a “twist” ranks the best and worst advertisers by brand category rather than just by the corporate parent as the PTC’s past lists have done.
The FCC will likely get a mess of complaints about the Nov. 10 episode of Fox’s animated Seth MacFarlane comedy Family Guy after the Parents Television Council encouraged members today to to file broadcast indecency complaints with the commission. PTC says it sprang into action because the episode contained explicit jokes about rape, molestation, sexual exploitation of children — and the “sexualized use of food and perverse ‘internal defrosting’ of frozen hot dogs.”
The watchdog group thinks Fox’s raunchy new “Animation Domination Hi-Def” is a long way from funny.
The advocacy group claims scenes of exploitation in primetime are more likely to be be played for laughs when they involve underage girls.
Shows like The Bachelor and Betty White’s Off Their Rockers are blurring the lines of what’s acceptable to show on primetime broadcast TV, argues a new study from the Parents Television Council. Based on findings between Jan. 1 and April 26, the PTC concluded “that blurred or pixilated full nudity is increasingly being shown on primetime broadcast television shows, and that almost 70% of this type of nudity is being shown on TV-PG rated programs.”
Angry about a proposal to relax the FCC’s rules regulating indecent content on broadcast television and radio, the Parents Television Council and Morality in Media are pressing Congress to stop the regulatory agency in its tracks.
The watchdog group’s president, Tim Winter: “We are focusing on #NoIndecencyFCC to let the FCC know that we consider its proposal to limit broadcast indecency complaints extremely troublesome,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “Only pursuing so-called ‘egregious’ complaints from the public about indecent TV or radio content will lead to broadcasters pushing the decency limits even further — including the airing of nudity or harsh profanity when millions of children are in the audience,” he said.
A study by the Parents Television Council of 392 primetime scripted programs on broadcast networks shown during the month following Vice President Joe Biden’s January meeting with entertainment industry executives on the topic revealed that 193 had some incident of violence.
The group says the April 14 episode violated the broadcast decency law and calls on its members to file formal FCC complaints. “Every Fox affiliate that aired this American Dad episode should be held accountable for violating the law,” says the group’s president, Tim Winter.
The Parents Television Council released data on media violence collected from all primetime broadcast programs that aired between Jan. 11 and Feb. 11, following Vice President Joe Biden’s meeting with the industry in January. During the one-month study period, of the 392 shows examined, 193, nearly half, contained violence; 121, almost a third, contained violence and guns.
The debate over violence on TV is heating up, with the Parents Television Council attacking ABC for a “graphic and disturbing” torture scene on the political drama Scandal.
Watch out zombies, the Parents Television Council is coming for you. The PTC is targeting AMC’s The Walking Dead over the drama’s violent content. The PTC is taking issue with The Walking Dead‘s rating, TV-14, claiming the violence depicted is too much for the rating given.
The Parents Television Council has launched a new public service campaign entitled “4 Every Girl” to combat the sexualization of girls by “advocating for a media environment where young girls are […]
