Decency Advocates Poised For Sunday's Super Bowl Broadcast
by Jenni Parker, Mary Rettig, and Bill Fancher
February 4, 2005
(AgapePress) - Pro-family groups say they will be keeping a close eye on this year's Super Bowl broadcast this weekend and hope they will not see a repeat of last year's R-rated programming. Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America (CWA) is braced for the February 6 Bowl game and its Halftime presentation. "I'm hopeful that we won't be outraged by an offensive show coming into our homes on a Sunday afternoon as we were in last year's Super Bowl," she says. The pro-family furor over that CBS broadcast a year ago has yet to cease rumbling.
MTV (a.k.a. Music Television) was responsible for last year's Halftime entertainment, which featured a number of rock and R&B artists doing the sort of bumping and grinding typical of their "artistry" as well as the now infamous Justin Timberlake performance that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction." The incident of brief nudity and other raunchy goings on during the MTV-produced Halftime show sparked widespread protest from pro-family viewers and drew more than a half million complaints against CBS, MTV, and their parent company, Viacom.
LaRue believes that public outcry will have a deterrent effect on the network officials, producers and sponsors of Super Bowl XXXIX. "Everything we've heard indicates that the NFL and Viacom and everyone involved in that has gotten the message loud and clear from all of the complaints that Americans filed with the FCC," she says.
But just in case it still hasn't sunk in, Congress is also trying once again to increase fines for indecency by tenfold in order to force networks to police their own productions -- and those involved in them -- more closely. The CWA spokeswoman feels such measures are important and commends the Federal Communications Commission for its efforts to respond to the complaints with stronger enforcement of federal indecency laws.
Still, LaRue points out, it remains essential for pro-family citizens to keep speaking out, communicating their values and standards to the network executives, advertisers, and producers involved with Super Bowl and other network and cable programming. "They have been underestimating the American people," she contends, "and that's why we need people who are offended by indecent broadcasts to continually make their complaints known to the FCC and to those who sponsor such shows."
Baring the Truth About MTV
Although Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council (PTC) was among those scandalized by last year's Super Bowl Halftime Show on CBS, he feels one good thing did come out of it. At least now, he says, a lot of formerly unaware parents know what their kids are seeing on MTV every afternoon.
"Parents witnessed first-hand the incessant crotch grabbing and revealing clothing, the dangerous mixture of aggression and sexuality, and the relentless sexual simulation and stimulation that characterizes MTV's programming," Bozell says. All that, he asserts, is par for the course on the youth-oriented cable network.
By way of statistical evidence, the family advocate references a recent PTC study that monitored MTV during its "Spring Break" programming and found staggering amounts of sex, violence, and profanity on the youth-oriented network. Analysts found the network's programs depicted about six incidents of violent behavior per hour; its music videos averaged 32 instances of foul language per hour, and its reality programs showed some 13 sexual scenes per hour.
The PTC report, titled "MTV Smut Peddlers: Targeting Kids with Sex, Drugs and Alcohol," reveals that in 171 hours of MTV programming, researchers found 1,548 sexual scenes containing 3,056 depictions of sex or various forms of nudity and 2,881 verbal sexual references. In response to these findings, Bozell comments, "There's no question that TV influences the attitudes and perceptions of young viewers, and MTV is deliberately marketing its raunch to millions of innocent children."
The PTC president goes on to call the constant barrage of sleaze on MTV "the most compelling case yet for consumer cable choice." As it now stands, he laments, "most parents have no choice but to take and pay for MTV if they want to watch basic cable in their homes."
This year's Super Bowl is being carried by the FOX Network, and the Emmy-award winning Don Mischer Productions will produce the "Ameriquest Mortgage Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show," featuring rock music legend Paul McCartney. Watched by a record 144.4 million U.S. viewers last year, the Super Bowl is annually the nation's highest-rated TV program and the most-watched single-day sporting event. The 2005 game will also be broadcast in more than 200 countries around the world.
