Entertainment & Pop Culture—Television

By Jerry Price - May 1, 2006 -

Think MTV is just a bunch of music videos that kids and young adults are watching? Think again! Actually, MTV has been out of the music video business for a decade. That programming model has been replaced by an advocacy agenda—not just any agenda, but one that critics say “obviously is slanted to the left.” On such shows as The Real World, The Newlyweds, Pimp My Ride, and Fight for Your Rights, MTV is advocating homosexuality and the “unfettered enjoyment of sex. Viewers are urged to take ‘political action’ in support of ‘comprehensive sex education,’ meaning contraception, condoms, and who knows what else.” Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone says that MTV “is in a unique position to succeed in its mission” because they have been “handed endless generations of young people who are blank slates.” Parents cannot hand MTV a blank slate and expect it to stay blank. The role of parents and churches is to teach children what they need to know and believe—to shape their minds before the culture does.

Mark Earley, “Beyond the Music (Video),” Breakpoint, http://www.pf.org , August 10, 2004 [Accessed December 15, 2005]

“Psychologists and psychiatrists formally define substance dependence as a disorder characterized by criteria that include spending a great deal of time using the substance; using it more often than one intends; thinking about reducing use or making repeated unsuccessful efforts to reduce use; giving up important social, family or occupational activities to use it; and reporting withdrawal symptoms when one stops using it . . . All these criteria can apply to people who watch a lot of television.”

“Television Addiction,” Scientific American, February 2002, 76.

“By the time your teenager finishes high school, he or she will have watched 23,000 hours of television! Compare that to the 11,000 hours spent in the classroom . . . From the time a teenager has gone from grades seven to twelve, they will have listened to a whopping 10,500 hours of music.”

Holly McClure, Death by Entertainment (Little Rock: Lion’s Head Publishing, 2001), 20-21.

“Professor Michael Kammen claims that most leisure activities in the early twentieth century were participatory and interactive. For example, the sale of sheet music, which presumed a piano player and other musicians or singers, was a very important industry. After the recording industry took off in the 1920s, musical skill was no longer required because most people sat and listened to music rather than participating in making music themselves. He comments that even the radio requires some engagement of the listener’s imagination; listening to radio is an activity sort of halfway between passivity and participation. But with the advent of television in 1948, little was left to the imagination, and in the 1970s the apt term ‘couch potato’ was introduced into our language. Now the average American adult watches four to five hours of television a day, the average child watches three hours, and the television is turned on in the average American household for seven hours and forty minutes each day.”

Richard Winter, Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 34.

According to the Parents Television Council, the Top Ten Best and Worst Shows for family viewing on prime time broadcast television are:

Best

  1. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition ABC/8:00 Sunday – Returning show
  2. Three Wishes NBC/9:00 Friday – 1st season
  3. American Idol Fox – Returning in spring ’06
  4. The Ghost Whisperer CBS/8:00 Friday – 1st Season
  5. Everybody Hates Chris UPN/8:00 Thursday – 1st Season
  6. Reba WB/9:00 Friday – Returning show
  7. Bernie Mac Fox/8:00 Friday – Returning show
  8. Dancing with the Stars ABC – Returning in spring ’06
  9. 7th Heaven WB/8:00 Monday – Returning show
  10. Not available.

Worst

  1. The War at Home Fox/8:30 Sunday – 1st Season
  2. The Family Guy Fox/9:00 Sunday – Returning show
  3. American Dad Fox/9:30 Sunday – Returning show
  4. The O.C. Fox/8:00 Thursday – Returning show
  5. C.S.I. (Crime Scene Investigation) CBS/9:00 Thursday – Returning show
  6. Desperate Housewives ABC/9:00 Sunday – Returning show
  7. Two and a Half Men CBS/9:00 Monday – Returning show
  8. That ’70s Show Fox – Returning in November ’05
  9. Arrested Development Fox/8:00 Monday – Returning show
  10. Cold Case CBS/8:00 Sunday – Returning show

Top Ten Best and Worst Shows for Family Viewing on Prime Time Broadcast Television (Parents Television Council), October 19, 2005

According to the Parents Television Council, the Top Ten Best/Worst Advertisers and the shows they frequently sponsored are:

Best

  1. The Campbell Soup Company — America’s Funniest Home Videos; It’s a Miracle
  2. J.M. Smucker Company — Sue Thomas F.B.Eye; America’s Funniest Home Videos
  3. Merck & Co. — Star Search; Sue Thomas F.B.Eye
  4. Clorox — Extreme Makeover: Home Edition; Joan of Arcadia
  5. Colgate Palmolive — Sue Thomas F.B.Eye; Reba
  6. Sears — Joan of Arcadia
  7. General Mills — Doc; Everybody Loves Raymond
  8. Coca-Cola — The Biggest Loser; Steve Harvey’s Big Time
  9. Mars — Everybody Loves Raymond; It’s a Miracle
  10. Wal-Mart — 8 Simple Rules; American Idol

Worst

  1. Yum! Brands — The O.C.; MTV Spring Break 2004; The Shield
  2. Toyota Motor Sales Inc. — Las Vegas; LAX; MTV Special; Nip/Tuck; The Shield; The O.C.
  3. Sprint Corporation — Everwood; The O.C.; Quintuplets
  4. Volkswagen — The O.C.; Quintuplets
  5. Ford — Las Vegas; The O.C.
  6. Daimler Chrysler — Fear Factor; MTV Spring Break 2004
  7. Pepsi — MTV Hits; MTV Spring Break 2004; The O.C.
  8. Nissan — The O.C.; The Shield
  9. Citigroup — Las Vegas; Everwood
  10. Proctor and Gamble — 2004 MTV Reality Awards; MTV Hits; MTV Special; The O.C

PTC Announces Top Ten Best/Worst Advertisers (Parents Television Council), August 31, 2005

  • 28% of Americans (29% of born again Christians) get their programming via satellite dish. (2003)
  • 73% of Americans subscribe to cable TV. Among born again Christians the penetration level is 71%, respectively. (2000)
  • In a given week, 52% of adults turn off a TV program because they don’t like the values or viewpoint it presents. (1998)
  • Over 3 out of 5 born again Christians (63%) have turned off a TV program because they did not like the values or viewpoint it presented in the last seven days (compared to 44% of non-Christians). (1998)
  • The chance that someone would turn off a TV program because they did not like the values or viewpoint it presents rises significantly with age. 40% of busters have turned off a program in the last seven days compared to 54% of boomers, 55% of builders, and 68% of seniors. (1998)

“Media and Technology,” Barna by Topic, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=27 (The Barna Group) [Accessed December 16, 2005]

“Television companies face a bleak future if they can’t persuade millions of customers to buy more or better programming, gear and services. Cable and satellite providers already serve 82 percent of all homes, and that’s not expected to grow much in the foreseeable future … To get an idea of the challenge companies face, consider this:

  • Cable operators are going all out to sell extra-fee digital TV service, although only 3 percent of people who don’t get it say they’re ‘considering’ buying it, according to a Horowitz Associates survey.
  • Satellite’s in a similar situation. Subscriber-acquisition costs already are up at DirecTV and EchoStar, and Horowitz finds that just 4 percent of non-subscribers are considering signing up for satellite.
  • The great mass of consumers aren’t voting with their pocketbooks for more programming. Although premium channels such as HBO, Showtime and Starz/Encore have been around for decades, only about 42 million homes, or 36 percent of the country, get at least one, reports Kagan Media Research.”

Excerpted from David Lieberman, “Cable’s Final Frontier: People Who Want Less,” http://www.usatoday.com , November 7, 2005

“Television these days is loaded with sex, sex, sex—double the number of sex scenes aired seven years ago . . . And the number of shows that include ‘safer sex’ messages has leveled off … There were nearly 3,800 scenes with sexual content spotted in more than 1,100 shows researchers studied, up from about 1,900 such scenes in 1998, the first year of the Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

“The study examined a sample of a week’s worth of programming on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB, PBS, Lifetime, TNT, USA Network and HBO. Sexual content, as defined in the study, could be anything from discussions about sex to scenes involving everything from kissing to intercourse.

“The study found that 70 percent of all shows included some sexual content, averaging about five sex scenes per hour. That’s up from about three scenes per hour in 1998, and from nearly 4.5 scenes an hour three years ago.

“The proportion of shows with sexual content in prime-time on the major broadcast networks—ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox—also increased, the study said. Nearly eight in 10 network shows, or 77 percent, included sexual content. That’s up from 67 percent in 1998 and 71 percent in 2002.

“Media watchdog groups say there’s way too much sex on television during the hours that kids may be watching.

“‘Kids who have repeated exposure to sexual content become sexually active at an earlier age. The research is absolutely there,’ said Tim Winter, executive director of the Parents Television Council.”

Excerpted from Jennifer C. Kerr, “Study Says There Is More Sex on TV,” http://www.breitbart.com , November 9, 2005

Further Learning

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