by Fred Jackson, Bill Fancher, and Jim Brown
(AgapePress) – It seems the quality of television and the number of people watching television have something in common these days: both are continuing to drop.
Last week, the Parents Television Council released a report which concluded that T.V. content during the “family hour” is getting more vulgar and violent. For example, the report said incidents of swearing have increased 78% in the last few years, while depictions of violence are up 70%.
Now comes word that T.V. viewership has taken a sharp tumble this summer. USA Today reports the major networks are down 13% from the same period last year. And the drop-off is pretty much across the board. Popular sitcoms and dramas are all seeing significant losses in audience. The newspaper quotes NBC Entertainment chief Jeff Zucker, who calls the trend “a scary proposition.”
Many Christians are not surprised with what is happening in the entertainment business. They have long argued that unless television executives get their products out of the gutter, they can expect increasing numbers of viewers, especially parents and their kids, to look for other ways to spend their time.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs recently conducted a study of the presentation of sexual material by the entertainment media. Dr. Robert Lichter, president of the nonpartisan research group, says the study uncovered some disturbing statistics.
“Ninety-eight percent of the sexual behavior [depicted] had no physical consequences,” he notes. “[In] five-thousand-plus scenes of sex, [we found] one pregnancy. Eighty-five percent of the time there were no emotional consequences, positive or negative. Ninety-six percent of the time, there were no judgments made about it, positive or negative.”
According to Lichter’s research, the most sex-saturated broadcast network was NBC, with 22 sex scenes per hour, nine of them involving hardcore material. Basic cable was quite similar to broadcast television, averaging one sex scene every five minutes (12 per hour) and one hardcore scene every 12 minutes (5 per hour).
Lichter says the CMPA’s study showed him that children are being taught some strange things about the occurrence of sex. “Basically in popular culture today, sex isn’t something that you think about beforehand, and it isn’t something that you judge afterward,” he observes. “It isn’t something that produces consequences. It just happens and then it goes away until the next time.”
Dr. Lichter says that is not a very good situation, when the average teenager spends thirty hours a week engulfed in the entertainment media.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
