Now long term readers will know that I have little or no sympathy for the PTC. We might agree on one thing a year – this year what we agree on is that No Ordinary Family is a show that people who want more shows for family audiences, including younger kids, should be watching – but my general opinion of the organization is that when they say they want to protect "the children" they define "children" as anyone who is still above ground. I used to write a weekly piece on this blog looking at the latest from the PTC including their weekly rants against shows, their campaigns to pressure advertisers to toe their line on content, and the spewing of their various writers about the supposed evils of TV. They still do that stuff, but I think I burned out in writing about those people. However sometimes they put out something that is so irritating and just wrong-headed that I have to react. This report is one of those things. The organization has started with a conclusion – that the Second Circuit Court's decision has led to a sudden increase in the use of profanity on TV – and is using the statistics they want that will "prove" their position.
Here is part of PTC president Tim Winter's statement at the release of the report:
"After the Second Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the FCC's congressionally-mandated authority to enforce the broadcast decency law, industry and media pundits predicted a sharp increase in the amount of profanity on television. Sadly, they were correct.
Our analysis of the first two weeks of this still-new fall television season shows a disturbing trend that shocked even us. Profanity is far more frequent and the profanity itself is far harsher than just five years ago. Even worse, the most egregious language is being aired during the timeslots when children are most likely to be in the audience. In 2010, 111 f-words were used during family hour compared with 10 in 2005.
Is this a coincidence? Is it an aberration? Or is this exactly the path that broadcasters and the 'creative community' in Hollywood set out when they began launching their legal attacks against the broadcast decency law?
While broadcasters continue to claim that they can regulate themselves, this type of increase in profane words aired on scripted programming - not on live broadcasts that are the subject of ongoing judicial review – suggests otherwise. Are we to expect a 69 percent increase in TV profanity every five years?"
The study counted the number of incidents in the first two weeks of the 2005-06 season (except for ABC which started their season a week later) and the first two weeks of the 2010-11 season. The PTC press release includes the following summary of the study's findings:
- Use of profanity increased 69.3% from 2005-2010
- Use of the bleeped or muted f-word increased from 11 incidents in 2005 to 276 incidents in 2010, an increase of 2409%
- Use of the bleeped or muted s-word increased from 11 incidents in 2005 to 95 incidents in 2010, an increase of 763%
- During the "family hour" (my quotation marks) incidents of the f-word increased from 10 in 2005 to 111 in 2010; use of the s-word increased from 11 in 2005 to 42 in 2010
- FOX showed the greatest increase in the use of profanity from 2005 to 2010 with a 269% increase.
8:00 | 9:00 | 10:00 | Total | |||||||||
2005 | 2010 | %Δ | 2005 | 2010 | %Δ | 2005 | 2010 | %Δ | 2005 | 2010 | %Δ | |
| Mild Non-Sexual Profanity | ||||||||||||
| Damn | 55 | 37 | -32.73% | 64 | 66 | 3.13% | 30 | 38 | 26.67% | 149 | 141 | -5.37% |
| Hell | 74 | 62 | -16.22% | 95 | 119 | 25.26% | 24 | 63 | 162.5% | 193 | 244 | 26.42% |
| Bastard | 33 | 23 | -30.30% | 45 | 52 | 15.56% | 17 | 36 | 111.76% | 95 | 111 | 16.84% |
| Bitch | 12 | 2 | -83.33% | 12 | 11 | -8.33% | 3 | 4 | 33.33% | 27 | 17 | 37.04% |
| Possible Sexual or Scatological Context | ||||||||||||
| Crap | 23 | 29 | 26.09% | 13 | 29 | 123.08% | 8 | 11 | 37.5% | 44 | 69 | 56.82% |
| Screw | 16 | 27 | 68.75% | 7 | 17 | 142.86% | 5 | 18 | 260% | 28 | 62 | 121.43% |
| Suck | 15 | 25 | 66.67% | 11 | 14 | 27.27% | 3 | 13 | 333.33% | 29 | 52 | 79.31% |
| Body Parts | ||||||||||||
| Ass | 52 | 64 | 23.08% | 53 | 59 | 11.32% | 14 | 25 | 78.57% | 119 | 148 | 24.37% |
| Boobs | 5 | 19 | 280% | 5 | 2 | -60% | 1 | 0 | -100% | 11 | 21 | 90.91% |
| Other Breasts | 6 | 15 | 150% | 14 | 8 | -42.86% | 5 | 3 | -40% | 25 | 26 | 4% |
| Balls | 0 | 5 | - | 1 | 1 | 0% | 2 | 3 | 50% | 3 | 9 | 200% |
| Other Genitals | 22 | 28 | 27.27% | 26 | 26 | 0% | 3 | 18 | 500% | 51 | 72 | 41.18 |
| Bodily Functions | ||||||||||||
| Piss | 4 | 20 | 400% | 10 | 17 | 70% | 11 | 7 | -36.36% | 25 | 44 | 83.33% |
| Douche | 1 | 0 | -100% | 2 | 1 | -50% | 0 | 2 | - | 3 | 3 | 50% |
| Bleeped Fuck | 10 | 111 | 1010% | 1 | 156 | 15500% | 0 | 9 | - | 11 | 276 | 2409.09% |
| Euph. Fuck | 5 | 13 | 160% | 10 | 11 | 10% | 5 | 17 | 240% | 20 | 41 | 105% |
| Bleeped Shit | 11 | 42 | 281.82% | 0 | 45 | - | 0 | 8 | - | 11 | 95 | 763.64% |
| Euph. Shit | 3 | 1 | -66.67% | 2 | 3 | 66.67% | 0 | 3 | - | 5 | 7 | 40% |
| Total | 347 | 523 | 50.72% | 371 | 637 | 71.7% | 131 | 278 | 112.21% | 849 | 1438 | 69.38% |
| Total minus Bleeped Words | 326 | 370 | 13.49% | 370 | 436 | 17.84% | 131 | 261 | 99.23% | 827 | 1067 | 29.02% |
So there you have the PTC's data and their methodology, and now a couple of things about my groupings. I grouped "Crap" "Screw" and "Suck" in the Possible Sexual or Scatological Context category on the grounds that these words can be used in a context that has nothing to do with (respectively) feces, sexual intercourse, or fellatio. Indeed Wiktionary defines "suck" in the context that it is commonly used as "To be inferior or objectionable: a general term of disparagement, sometimes used with at to indicate a particular area of deficiency," while "crap" is defined as "Something of poor quality," or "Something that is rubbish; nonsense."
The whole question of euphemisms and other words for bodily parts is another area worthy of some exploration. Does someone saying "poop" when confronted with feces qualify as a euphemism for "shit?" How about when a woman refers to her "vajayjay" in the style of Oprah Winfrey on her afternoon talk show and is that wrong? How about calling someone a "real dick?" Are you referring to other genitals or do you just not like people named Richard (I joke here, but a lot of "nannybots" on comments boards will censor the name Dick)? The inclusion of most of the words on this list is quite frankly an absurd attempt to turn the clock back to the 1960s as they were seen on TV.
What is of not of course is the increase in the two bleeped words. The reasons for that can be summed up with two words: Reality Television. If you'll notice, the majority of incidents in which the bleeped words were heard (or rather not heard, and not seen either) occurred in the first two hours of primetime, which as it happens is also the time period when most reality shows air. In both 2005 and 2010 there was only one reality show on in primetime; in 2005 it was ABC's The Bachelor, while in 2010 it was NBC's The Apprentice. On those shows the words are used in conversation – often angry conversation, but conversation nonetheless – the way that most people use these words. In other words my view of the matter is that they are not being inserted gratuitously by the producers but are included because there is no way to exclude them from the conversation and retain the sense of what was being said. TV producers have made obvious efforts to keep viewers from hearing the words or even lip reading the words. And yet the PTC is complaining about words that they not only don't hear but in most cases don't see because the networks have blurred or pixelated the lips of the people saying them.
Scripted programming generally doesn't include bleeped expletives because the writers and show runners wouldn't dream of including the words that would have to be bleeped in the first place. They would use euphemisms if they had to use the words at all. But again we have to note that most of the words that the PTC lists as profanity are either not considered objectionable by most people (including the PTC in the case of "damn" and "hell" and a couple of the others since they refer to them as "mild profanity" in reviews).
The thing about this whole report that makes me wonder about the PTC and question their methodology is the number of references, both in the report and in Winter's statement in the press release, to the Second Circuit's ruling on the constitutionality of the FCC's regulation of broadcasting. Winter specifically mentions that "...industry and media pundits predicted a sharp increase in the amount of profanity on television. Sadly, they were correct." This seems to be a deliberate effort on the part of the PTC to link the "increase" in profanity to the Second Circuit Court decision. And that is something that this study really doesn't do. If you want to show the "impact" of the Court's decision you either offer a comparison between the first two weeks of the 2009-10 season or the 2010-11 seasons – one immediately before the decision and one immediately after the decision – or you show the year by year figures for each year between 2005 and 2010. If you took the latter course, and if the PTC is right about the impact of the decision you would see a relatively stable number of incidents for the period 2005-2009 and a sudden jump with the 2010 season. The thing is that I am convinced that you wouldn't see that; I'm convinced that what you'd see is an increase over time on a fairly stable basis. Is that good? If you believe that a bleeped expletive is as bad as hearing the actual word because you can imply what the word is, then no it isn't good. But the fact is that the broadcast networks are not violating the law; in fact they are obeying the law because they are not airing the actual words. It's not a loophole, it's the law. and certainly the "blame" for this cannot be laid at the feet of the Second Circuit Court and their decision no matter how much the PTC would like it to be the true.
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