New Parent Television Council Findings on Primetime Nudity

By: American Decency Staff

I wanted to bring to your attention some new findings from the PTC about a staggering increase in (semi) pixilated nudity on primetime broadcast television that were released in an LA Times story over the weekend. 

 

·         During the 2011-2012 season there were 76 incidents of full nudity on 37 shows compared to 15 incidents in 14 shows the previous year, representing a 407% increase in incidents.

·         Almost 70% of the scenes that depicted full nudity during the 2011–2012 study period were on shows that aired before 9:00 pm and as early as 7:00 pm. In comparison, 50% of the full nudity scenes aired after 9:00 pm the previous year.

·         Out of 76 instances of full nudity during the 2011–2012 study period, only five of those depictions occurred on shows that contained an “S” descriptor alerting parents to the explicit adult content.

·         Relative to full-frontal nudity, one instance occurred during the 2010–2011 study period and by the same time the following year, 64 instances of full-frontal nudity had aired. This represents a 6300% increase in just one year.

·         There was a 2700% increase in the use of blurring or pixilation to cover body parts in 2011–2012 compared to the previous year (n = 56 and n = 2 respectively).

·         During the 2010–2011 study period, black bars, logos, and/or conveniently placed objects in a scene were used to block the view of sexual organs from the viewer 87% of the time. In contrast, during the 2011–2012 study period, 74% of the incidents of full nudity used blurring or pixilation to cover sexual body parts.

 

Of course, some of these instances don’t contain a “sexual” element and are thus not necessarily suited for FCC broadcast decency enforcement, it is nonetheless a very troubling trend in the wrong direction for us.  We will be communicating directly with advertisers and the networks themselves to try to reverse this trend, and I look forward to working with all of you to bring that about.

---