Issues@Hand
AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs
November-December 1999 – So what’s on the tube tonight? Let’s see, the new fall season is underway, and featured on prime-time network television are…bestiality, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, and pedophilia. There are endless jokes about all sorts of sexual situations and perversions. What’s going on?
What’s going on is simple: network TV is being produced by people who want more sex – not less – for a culture that is still not sure it wants sex on the tube at all.
The result is a schizophrenic culture where nobody is happy. Hollywood writers and producers feel constrained by whatever remains of society’s standards of decency, while many adults – especially parents – feel assaulted by filthy shows that have little or no entertainment value.
Nevertheless, Hollywood wants more, and that’s what counts. Fox Entertainment President Doug Herzog said, “I think we need to keep pushing the envelope, I think we need to be relevant and keep on exploring and experimenting. That’s what the audience expects from Fox, and I think that’s what the audience demands in general right now from network television.”
Herzog could not be more wrong. Besides the cancellation of Manchester Prep, other vulgar Fox shows appear to be in trouble. Action, also controversial because of its bawdy content, has gotten poor ratings, as has the smutty prime-time cartoon Family Guy. The audience demand for smut may be lower than Herzog thinks.
“This is the show for you”
On the Hollywood side of the equation, the expectation seems to be that viewers are leering perverts who enjoy ribald dialogue. Some shows, like ABC’s Norm, for example, seem to revel in their inherent lewdness. Introducing the September 29 episode with a little pre-show chit-chat, series star Norm MacDonald told potential viewers, “So, if you like dirty, this is the show for you.”
At least he was honest. Besides the usual sitcom humor about the main character’s sex life, this show kept up a constant barrage of jokes about the sex life of Norm’s dog, including remarks about doggie porn and dogs engaging in sadomasochistic sex.
Particularly vulgar on all networks this season has been the consistent use of male genitalia as a theme or source of humor. Of the 80 shows AFA reviewed for the start of the new season, 33 used the male sex organ in their dialogue.
There is an attitude in Hollywood that’s driving this drivel. It appears that networks are laboring under the assumption – without a shred of evidence, and much evidence to the contrary (AFA Journal, 5/98) – that people want bucketloads of sex and vulgarity flooding their living rooms. And sometimes the networks seem shocked to discover otherwise.
For example, Fox’s new teen drama Manchester Prep stirred controversy in the early summer. The series was to focus on the sex-obsessed teens at an elite New York prep school. In the opening scene of Prep’s pilot, a teenage girl leers at and comments on her stepbrother’s genitalia as he’s taking a shower. In another scene, a teenaged girl on horseback is taught by a friend how to use the saddle in order to sexually climax.
The controversy created by Prep was so intense – apparently taking the network by surprise – that Fox canceled the series before a single episode aired.
Pushing the envelope
So why do network executives give the green light to such raw sexual depictions? The networks’ penchant for pornographic TV appears to come, at least in part from Hollywood’s prevailing rule of thumb that sex always sells. In fact, Prep’s executive producer Roger Kumble defended the series during the controversy, saying, “I’m trying to create a popular show for the network. So sex does play a part.”
Most surveys, however, demonstrate clearly that parents, at least, are not eager for more sex on the tube. Rather, they are embarrassed, red-faced adults, who frequently find themselves frantically reaching for the remote control in order to protect their children from a profanity-laced, sex-saturated TV landscape.
Unfortunately, many in Hollywood just don’t get it. Not only are many producers of network TV enjoying this inverted Renaissance, but the principal actors and actresses want even more. The unbridled sexuality, for example, is just fine with Camryn Manheim, the award-winning actress of the legal drama The Practice (ABC). She said, “I’m all against censorship, so whatever’s pushing the limits is all right by me.”
Michael Boatman of the sitcom Spin City (ABC) wants even more: “I don’t think that there’s actually enough pushing of the envelope, and I would love to see the [broadcast] networks follow the cable networks.”
Switching to cable
Like Herzog, however, Boatman’s reasoning is faulty. The major lesson the networks could learn from cable is how to attract viewers. Daily Variety says broadcast network viewership has dropped 27% since 1984 – while the audience for basic cable has grown an astonishing 583%.
If ad revenue and profitability are any indications, viewers are not sliding over to cable to get more sex, violence, and profanity. Variety ranked cable’s top 20 programs by ad revenue and turned up an assortment of fairly wholesome programming: ESPN, CNN, the Weather Channel, A&E, Nickelodeon, Lifetime and Discovery dominated the lineup. With a few exceptions – World Wrestling Federation on the USA network, the sometimes risque music videos on Country Music TV and frequently risque music videos on MTV – cable seems to be safer than the networks.
A stubborn Hollywood had better learn this lesson, because the main question is not "What's going on with network TV?" but "What's going off?" the answer is viewers, and they are switching to cable fast. 
