America may no longer be the world of Opie Taylor on "The Andy Griffith Show" and the Beaver and Wally on "Leave it to Beaver," but a television monitoring organization is expressing disbelief that the nation has decayed to the point that the words "a--, b----, butthead, douche, slut, slut shamer, slut bag and slut basket" are acceptable content – for just one sentence on just one television show for children during prime time.
And that nudity is acceptable.
And that images of a blood-drenched body of a woman wearing only underwear strung up from the ceiling of her home is acceptable.
And that a conversation about sex with a corpse is a good thing.
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The Parents Television Council says it is alerting parents in a campaign that includes a petition demanding a reform of the rating system.
That's after its new study showed the full extent of the problem.
The organization's chief, Tim Winter, says the study suggests, strongly, something has to be done.
It revealed that there are no more family shows.
None.
"The number of prime-time TV-G rated programs decreased from 27 hours in a two-week period in 1997 to 0 hours in a two-week period in 2014. In 2015 and 2016, there were no regularly scheduled prime time series rated TV-G," the organization found.
Also, at the same time, there was a huge plunge in the prime-time broadcast of shows rated TV-PG.
And many times the ratings were meaningless, as the content of programs rated TV-PG and TV-14 became more and more indistinguishable.
"For most of the 20th century, the entertainment industry acted responsibly in keeping entertainment appropriate for all audiences, in the awareness that television was 'a guest in the home.' From 1934, when the Federal Communications Commission first set up statutes regulating the airwaves, to the 1970s, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed them, and up to the present day, it has been the law that the airwaves are public property belonging to all Americans," the report said.
"Further, private corporations are permitted to use them to make a profit, free of charge, only so long as they do so 'in the public interest.' The court confirmed that the broadcast airwaves are 'uniquely pervasive,' and that the government and the American people have a 'compelling national interest' in keeping graphic violence, explicit sex, and other harmful content off the public airwaves in a 'time, place and manner' when children are likely to be in the audience."
In a statement about the campaign, Winter said programs now frequently include "a sexual intercourse scene" with graphic details.
And the violence is bloody.
"In recent months, we've seen a woman commit suicide by shoving an ice pick into her eye; a man pull a razor blade across a woman's throat as she choked to death on her own blood; and a man stab a woman to death as she was performing oral sex on him in the front seat of his car," he said.
"Yes these shows – and every other program on broadcast TV – [are] rated as appropriate for children."
The list of words cited above appeared in one sentence for the ABC program "The Real O'Neals."
"The show was rated PG, which is the same rating Disney uses for 'Cinderella,' 'Inside Out' and 'The Good Dinosaur,'" Winter said.
He said the ratings need to be reformed, and an oversight board, which currently includes those who are rating their own programs, should be revamped.
The petition calls for a fix to the industry.
Winter told WND the first "G" show in years to appear was this year's "Little Bigshots."
"Not surprisingly, it's doing well," he said.
But the rating system is wrong, "to the point of being fraudulent."
The PTC report said Congress has made it clear that the industry is responsible for ensuring programming is distributed in a way that minimizes children's exposure to adult content.
"However, the industry's answer to America's growing concern with increasing sex, profanity, and violence on television was not to reduce such content. Rather, the entertainment industry's representatives chose to create a TV content rating system (similar to the family movie ratings system), which they claimed would assist parents in protecting children from harmful media content."
But the report said the television shows rarely meet the standards of the ratings they're given, often put people in charge of evaluating their own shows and are taking family TV watching to new lows.
"Regularly scheduled series rated TV-G (appropriate for all audiences) have been eliminated from prime time," it said. And "graphic content on television is increasing in both amount and intensity.
"The amount of both nudity and violence (particularly weapon-related violence involving guns, bladed weapons, and blunt force) increased per hour of programming on prime-time broadcast TV between 2011 and 2014," the report said.
All violence was up 6 percent. Weapons-related violence was up 17 percent. Nudity was up 93 percent.
The council explained that the vast body of scientific, psychological and medical research shows that exposure to graphic violence and explicit sex is harmful to children.
"Parents who rely on the TV Content Ratings System to make informed decisions about what to watch on television have been deceived," Winter said. "The implications in our report are enormous and should give the TV industry significant pause. The industry should have to answer as to why TV-G rated primetime series are extinct; why the lines between TV-PG and TV-14 shows are blurred; why more adult content is being shown on TV-PG shows; why nudity and violence are increasing on broadcast TV overall."
He said Congress, the FCC, public health advocates and parents "must insist that the TV Content Ratings System be accountable to the public and meet the needs of the parents and families it was intended to serve."
"Parents must be alerted to potentially harmful TV content, and the ratings system, which the V-chip utilizes to block unwanted content, can only work if the ratings are accurate. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the ratings system’s creation, it is time for the system to be accurate, consistent, transparent, and accountable to the public."
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