Interesting juxtaposition of stories at WaPo and the Washington Times this morning.
More than three-quarters of prime-time TV shows contain some sexual content, significantly more than previous years, a study shows. . .
For its "Sex on TV 4" study, Kaiser researchers reviewed 1,154 programs for the 2004-05 season on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, WB, PBS, Lifetime, TNT, USA Network and HBO.
They found that 70 percent of all shows and 77 percent of prime-time shows had sexual content, ranging from sexual conversations to sexual intercourse. The number of sexual scenes was 3,783, almost double the 1,930 seen in the first Kaiser study in 1998.
Two-thirds of the 2005 shows included sexual talk and 35 percent involved sexual behavior. The shows also averaged five sexual scenes an hour, up from 4.4 hourly sexual scenes in 2002 and 3.2 hourly sexual scenes in 1998.
However, the portion of TV shows in which sex was a "strong" element fell, to 11 percent in 2005 from 14 percent in 2002.
The [FCC's] role as broadcast nanny has come under greater scrutiny in recent months as consumers and lawmakers grow concerned about the increasingly coarse content of radio and television -- last year, the FCC received more than 1 million complaints about programs. Broadcasters say the FCC's content guidelines are too tough and arbitrarily applied while some lawmakers, viewers and interest groups blame the agency for being too lax.
The issue has even split FCC officials serving on the same commission, hindering the process.
Some chairmen made it a priority to collect fines; others let the penalties languish until the agency's five-year statute of limitations voided them. None of the chairmen was quick about it. The record shows that an average of 16 months passes from the broadcast date of an incident to the issuance of an indecency ruling. One case took 56 months to resolve.
The FCC is preparing to release a wave of backlogged decisions in the next few weeks after nearly a year of silence, and agency officials promise that the process will speed up.
