TV 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.

What TV now does far better than ever before is push the vulnerable closer to or beyond their brink. It’s difficult to afflict the well-adjusted, to have them do a 180. Maybe the repetitive, antisocial messages that all forms of entertainment have become reliant upon can move them a few degrees off, but nothing that would have them storm a campus with an AK47. But if the vulnerable are moved even one or two degrees toward or off their brink, if the messages become a prompt…. TV’s always there to give the vulnerable that extra little push, the kind that makes all of us vulnerable.

CEO Gordon Smith says it’s in favor of Rockefeller’s Violent Content Research Act of 2013. “Broadcasters support community decency standards attendant to our broadcast licenses.”

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 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.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee said that he intends to make one last attempt to give the FCC the legal authority to rein in violence in the media before retiring from the Senate in 2015.

A multimedia public service effort is designed to raise parental awareness of TV and film ratings, parental controls, media literacy and mental health issues.

The television body count is on the way up, says the second edition of a Funeralwise.com survey of 40 programs during fall 2012 which found an increase over theyear before. Guns were the most frequent cause of death, but the most frequent victims were already dead, sort of: we’re talking zombies.

FCC inaction on media ownership suggests that it may not outlaw virtual duopolies. ~~ Peter Liguori, the newly minted CEO of Tribune Co., says he hasn’t ruled out holding onto the newspapers, one of which, the flagship Chicago Tribune, just this week demonstrated some first-rate reporting with a four-part series on what led toTribune’s four-year bankruptcy nightmare. ~~ It’s hard to understand why TV programmers won’t step up and take any responsibility for the epidemic of gun violence — and offer something other than platitudes and volunteering to be “part of the conversation.”

President Obama’s plans for curbing gun violence announced Wednesday did not suggest any connection between bloody entertainment fictions and real-life violence. Instead, the White House is calling on research on the effect of media and video games on gun violence.

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.

If there’s any soul-searching among top television executives about onscreen violence contributing to real-life tragedies like the Connecticut school shooting, it isn’t readily apparent. All say the horrors of Newtown and Aurora, Colo., rocked them. But during a series of meetings with reporters over the last 10 days at the TCA winter press tour, none offered concrete examples of how it is changing what they put on the air, or if that is necessary.

On Tuesday at the Television Critics Association press tour, Fox Entertainment Chairman Kevin Reilly was on the defensive when pressed by journalists on media violence questions that have become a hot topic in the wake of last month’s shooting rampage that left 26 people dead, 20 of them children, at a Connecticut elementary school.

The TV business has to step up and become part of what should be a national, multipronged effort to stop killings like that in Newtown, Conn. And TV doesn’t have to wait around for the definitive answers that may never come. TV can act now — It can stop airing so many shows that romanticize gun violence; it can quit scaring people with incessant stories of violent crime; and it can also lead the national debate on gun violence by mobilizing its journalists.

Critically acclaimed series like Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire are sharpening the blades on a new level of savagery.

CHICAGO (AP) — If your preschooler can’t sleep — turn off the violence and nighttime TV. That’s the message in a new study that found sleep problems are more common […]