Ottawa, September 30, 1999 -- The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released a decision concerning Télévision Quatre Saisons’ (TQS) broadcast of the feature film Never Talk to Strangers at 7:30 pm. The film is a psychological suspense/thriller about a woman psychiatrist who becomes intimately involved with a mysterious stranger. Two viewers complained that they were “surprised and shocked to see...very erotic scenes intended for adult audiences...in the early evening”. They further alleged that through the broadcast of such programming “we shouldn’t be surprised to see more and more violence against women.”
The Quebec Regional Council considered the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Violence Code. While the Council did not find that the movie contained any gratuitous violence or violence against women, it did find that some of the scenes included in the movie depicted violence and sexuality such that they should be considered as being intended for adult audiences. The Council stated:
[T]he Council has no hesitation in concluding that the combined elements of fear, suspense, gore and explicitness, referred to in the Kazan decision, are present in at least the scenes showing the mutilated cat, the bloody writing on the wall and the final showdown where the psychiatrist kills her father and her lover. The Council considers that the presence of these elements, in combination with the overall suspenseful and frightening nature of the movie, renders the aforementioned scenes as “intended for adult audiences”.
The Council also considers that some of the erotic scenes, in particular the very first sex scene which depicts “rough” lovemaking, come within the purview of what would generally be considered as material “intended for adult audiences”.
The Council would have had no problem with the broadcast of the film after 9 pm but, by broadcasting the movie in the early evening, the Council found TQS to be in “violation of Clause 3.1 of the Violence Code which states that ‘programming which contains scenes of violence intended for adult audiences shall not be telecast before the late evening viewing period, defined as 9 pm to 6 am.’”
The Council further found TQS in breach of the Violence Code regarding the provision of viewer advisories. A viewer advisory in both visual and audio format had preceded the film but then had only scrolled once along the bottom of the screen, shortly after the third commercial break. Such provision of advisories does not fulfil the requirements of Clause 5.2 of the Violence Code which states that “broadcasters shall provide a viewer advisory at the beginning of, and during programming telecast outside of late evening hours, which contains scenes of violence not suitable for children [Emphasis added]”.
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 (###) ###-####.