Ottawa, October 22, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released its decision concerning episodes of the fantasy programs Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess broadcast on CFPL-TV (London). A viewer complained of the violence and alleged there were “porn images” and “S&M” contained in the programs.
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Violence Code. The Council took no issue with the Sunday afternoon scheduling and PG rating of the programs. The Council also noted that, while both these action/adventure fantasy programs contained many scenes of violence, “the fighting is portrayed as more acrobatic than violent in these shows and the results of the violence are more suggested than graphic.” Moreover, the Council did not find that the programs contained “porn images” and “S&M” as alleged by the complainant, although it did find that many scenes “contained ... sexual innuendo and suggested sexual activity.”
With respect to the requirement to air viewer advisories, the Council noted that
[t]he test for determining whether advisories are required differs depending on whether the program in question was broadcast in a pre- or post-watershed environment. In the post-watershed environment, the test is the same as described above, i.e. whether the program contained scenes of violence “intended for adult audiences.” In the pre-watershed environment, however, the threshold for requiring viewer advisories is much lower; a program must merely contain “scenes of violence not suitable for children.”
It found that Xena depicted violence in a “slightly more realistic” fashion than Hercules and that, as a result, the show contained “scenes of violence not suitable for children”. The broadcaster was thus required to include viewer advisories to that effect. By failing to provide such advisories, the Council found the broadcaster in breach of Clause 5.2 of the Violence Code.
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 430 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 (###) ###-####.