Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9404130004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You've heard of Wildmon. His organization - the American Family Association - runs those full-page ads in this newspaper and others around the country asking you, the viewer, to write the TV networks and stop buying products from companies, such as - until recently - S.C. Johnson Wax.
He's been incensed mostly at the language, sexual content and violence of shows, and the fact that companies continue to buy commercial time on those programs over his protests.
The problem with most of Wildmon's objections is that they are targeted at shows that are aimed at adults and are on TV during the latter part of the evening's schedule - the time children are more likely to be in bed and adults watching.
Ridiculously, he's targeted ``Saturday Night Live,'' a show that doesn't even begin until 11:30 p.m., for particular venom. Maybe he should ask parents to see that their kids are in bed by 11:30 Saturday night so they'll be well-rested for church the next morning.
He's blasted MTV, the movie industry and soap operas, but his most visible targets have been prime-time TV.
And now Wildmon seems to have allies in the networks, who this season are determined to move sexual jokes, double-meanings and puns into the earliest part of the evening's schedule.
That's all we television junkies needed, more ammunition for Wildmon and his ilk.
Examples:
The lead female character in ``It Had to Be You'' is told to ``find a man who'd rather be on top of you than on the Times bestseller list.''
``The Mommies,'' one review of it said, ``is littered with jokes about anatomy.'' One joke was that ``Paul would never get a vasectomy. He's such a baby when it comes to having his genitals worked over.''
In ``Phenom'' a teen-ager wants to know about orgasms. In ``Family Album,'' the husband regrets not having time for ``incredibly hot, toe-sucking love.''
Let's be clear here. Like most of my generation - whose children include pre-teens as well as teen-agers - I'm no prude about sex. Went through the revolution, you know? Talked to my children about sex before I really wanted to because I realized they'd hear about it in the ``real world'' - school.
When Jerry Seinfeld, who comes on in the last half of prime-time, did a show about masturbation - which never used that word, by the way - I thought it was the funniest half-hour on television last season.
Though it's gotten sort of tired now, I still enjoy ``Saturday Night Live'' occasionally. ``Cheers'' had overworked almost every sex joke imaginable by the time its run ended, but it had been funny.
But now even I'm offended. I don't want to have to explain what's so funny about a guy getting ``his genitals worked over'' to my 10-year-old. So, maybe, I'm more prudish than I thought.
In any case, I'll do what I've thought all along those who object to television content ought to do: Change the channel or turn it off.
Pretty simple, but apparently lots of us parents are just too lazy to punch the buttons on the remote control.
That's the easy part, and the one Wildmon seems always to forget. Nobody's forcing us to watch.
Though I'm loath to admit it, we probably should go one step further and follow Wildmon's advice to let local stations, the networks and the sponsors know how we feel about shows we find objectionable.
With any luck, the ratings system will do most of that work for us. Last week, for instance, none of the shows I cited in the examples above ranked higher than 71st.
But since in our system the ``airwaves'' are considered public property held in trust by TV stations, we have every right to let the people who control them know how they are doing as our trustees.
Fortunately, the system - for all its flaws - does usually work. Shows people don't watch don't stay on long. Or they get moved to more appropriate time slots.
I know in some quarters it's positively anti-intellectual and anti-religious to admit it, but I love television. Millions of us do. I guess I'm just going to have to work a little harder at making it work the way it's supposed to.
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics - and, what the heck, sometimes television - for this newspaper.
by CNB