The Parents Television Council (www.parentstv.org) has released its first study on children’s television and suggests that there is more violence on children’s entertainment programming than on adult-oriented television.
Titled ‘Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: A Content Analysis of Children’s Television,’ the PTC report focused on entertainment programming for school-aged children aged 5-10 on broadcast television and expanded basic cable. Over a three-week period in the summer of 2005, the council monitored after-school and Saturday morning shows on eight networks including ABC, FOX, NBC, WB, ABC Family, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.
The study found 3,488 incidents of violence for an average of 7.86 instances per hour. This is compared to a 2002 report, in which the organization found an average 4.71 depictions of violence per hour during prime time programming geared to adults. The latest study of kids’ programming also recorded 858 incidents of verbal aggression, 275 incidents of sexual content and 250 incidents of language judged to be offensive.
‘This disturbing trend signifies that parents can no longer be confident that their children will not have access to dark violence, sexual innuendo or offensive language on entertainment programming targeted toward children,’ says PTC president L. Brent Bozell. ‘We do realize that this is probably not a deliberate effort to undermine the social fabric of young children, but this thoughtlessness still produces the same end result.’
According to the report, Cartoon Network had the highest total number of violent incidents, while ABC Family was given the most-punch-per-program award. The Disney Channel came out looking the best with the least violent programming. The council warns that the highest levels of offensive language, verbal abuse, sexual content and offensive/excretory references were found on The WB, which will soon be replaced by The CW.
Examples cited in the report include a fight scene in Fox’s anime-inspired Shaman King, where the character Zeke kicks Yoh in the head and then reaches into his chest and rips out his soul. The index finger was also wagged at the SpongeBob SquarePants episode ‘Sailor Mouth,’ in which SpongeBob unwittingly uses profanity thinking it’s ‘fancy talk.’ Though the curse words are bleeped, the installment raised a big red flag with the PTC, which is also upset by the growing amount of adult-oriented subtext in children’s programming. ‘Sadly, producers must think that if they can entertain parents with double entendres and innuendo the parents will encourage the children to watch,’ Bozell remarks.
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