Remember the familyhour?
Once upon a time, broadcasters felt an obligation (OK, there was some backstage arm-twisting) to designate the 8-9 p.m. EST time slot as "family viewing" time. Sure, some of the programming was pretty inane, but at least you could watch TV with your kids without worrying about references to sexual positions and condoms.
Linda Chavez has a column on the death of family friendly TV.
Am I imagining it or is television becoming even more family unfriendly? For years now, primetime television fare has offered a steady diet of comedies that depend on sexual innuendo and situations for laughs, crime dramas that make the world seem like it's filled with sadistic predators and perverts, often within our own homes, and cable "news" programs that spend as much time dissecting the bizarre antics of this week's celebrity bad girl (or boy) as they do covering real news.
But avoiding objectionable material has become more difficult, despite V-chips, which allow parents to control access to certain programs. And one of the more toxic areas is now the ads.
Not only do commercials try to use sex to sell everything from automobiles to soap, it seems half the ads on TV now are marketing sex itself in the form of sex-enhancing drugs. And there's no avoiding the ads, no matter how careful you are with selecting your programming.
I noticed this phenomenon a long time ago. Back when my oldest daughter was in elementary school, we used to watch 7th Heaven as a family. But during October one year, we didn't watch the show, even though it had been a staple for us. Why? Because every Monday night, 7th Heaven was followed by some slasher movie, from Halloween to Friday the 13th to A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the entire hour of 7th Heaven was punctuated by commercials for these movies. We decided that watching a wholesome show wasn't worth having our seven-year-old sitting through commercials for horror movies.
Now, watching a baseball game subjects children to ads for erectile dysfunction medication, as well as alcohol commercials which tout sex along with the buzz.
It begs the question, what can a parent watch with her kids?
Frequently, whenever I talk about networks voluntarily refraining from such advertising, at least before 9 p.m. Eastern, some liberal will say, "If you don't like it, just change the channel." But there is a problem when all the channels display the same thing. We're not talking about government regulation here, but is there no standard too low for television?
I suppose there's always Boomerang, but there's only so much Snagglepuss a mom can watch.
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