Ottawa, March 26, 2002 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council today released its decision concerning a radio station contest held in August 2001 by CHRK-FM (Rock 97, Calgary). In order to win tickets to a concert, the male contestant had to dance naked on a major traffic thoroughfare during morning rush hour. The CBSC Prairie Regional Panel found this contest in breach of Clause 11(b) of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics which prohibits broadcasters from orchestrating contests that are likely to cause a public inconvenience or disturbance:
All station contests and promotions should be conceived and conducted in good taste, and particular care should be taken to ensure that they are not likely to give rise to a public inconvenience or disturbance.
The Panel noted the similarity of this case to another contest examined by the Panel in which a woman had ridden a bicycle down a main Winnipeg street in order to be eligible to win a cash prize. In that decision, the Prairie Regional Panel stated “It is perfectly obvious to the Council that a nude woman (or, the Council assumes, a nude man) cycling down the principal avenue of one of the nation’s largest cities could reasonably be expected to constitute a distraction for drivers.” As the Panel pointed out in this case, “When Lady Godiva, with an analogous attention-getting goal, tried the same thing in Coventry’s marketplace in 1040 A.D., traffic was not as heavy.” The Panel had no hesitation in concluding that the nude dancing man in the CHRK-FM contest posed an equal distraction for drivers in Calgary. The Panel made the following comments in its decision:
[T]his Panel does not doubt that drivers could be expected to be distracted by a man dancing naked on a major thoroughfare. In such circumstances, the possibility of an accident would not be inconceivable. [...] [I]t is clear that the broadcaster’s orchestration of a contest encouraging a naked dancing man on a public thoroughfare in Calgary constitutes a public inconvenience or disturbance and is in breach of Clause 11(b) of the Code.
It recognized that the contest stunt was related to the title of John Mellencamp’s album “Dance Naked” and that the prize was in fact tickets to a Mellencamp concert. The Panel explained, however, that this background information was irrelevant to its finding of a breach of the CAB Code of Ethics:
The Panel acknowledges that radio contests can be a useful method of attracting and retaining listeners. They can be an amusing way for listeners to interact with a broadcast medium. None of this is, however, inconsistent with the notion that the purpose of the contest code provision is meant not to prohibit contests that may be amusing, novel or unusual; its purpose is only to ensure that contests are conducted fairly and do not jeopardize public safety.
Canada’s private broadcasters have themselves created industry standards in the form of Codes on ethics, gender portrayal and television violence by which they expect the members of their profession will abide. In 1990, they also created the CBSC, which is the self-regulatory body with the responsibility of administering those professional broadcast Codes, as well as the Code dealing with journalistic practices first created by the Radio Television News Directors Association of Canada (RTNDA) in 1970. More than 500 radio and television stations and specialty services from across Canada are members of the Council.
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All CBSC decisions, Codes, links to members’ and other web sites, and related information are available on the World Wide Web at www.cbsc.ca. For more information, please contact the National Chair of the CBSC, Ron Cohen, at (###) ###-####.