Ottawa, August 23, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released a decision concerning an episode of the series Dead Man’s Gun entitled “The Mesmerizer” which was broadcast on CHRO-TV (Pembroke and Ottawa). Viewers complained that CHRO was “irresponsible in airing this program”at 9 p.m. and with a PG rating because it contained “nudity and sexual scenes”.
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Violence Code. It found no breach. On the scheduling issue, the Council stated
In the circumstances of this case, the Council would be hard-pressed to find that the broadcaster violated any scheduling guidelines by airing the program when it did. First, the Council considers that the brevity and the relative innocuousness of the scene in question might not even have triggered any conclusion on its part (had it been called upon to deal with such a set of facts) that the program be shown after the watershed hour established by the Violence Code. Second, in any event, the program in question was, in fact, aired after the 9 p.m. watershed hour.
The Council also found that no viewer advisories were required and that the PG rating attributed by the broadcaster to the program was “the most appropriate for the program in question.” On the latter issue it noted that
The sex/nudity guidelines for a “PG” rating are that the program “could possibly contain brief scenes of nudity” and “might have limited and discreet sexual references or content when appropriate to the storyline or theme”.
In its decision, the Council also provided some cautionary notes regarding the Canadian classification system for television programming. It stated:
[The Council] recognizes that the ratings are but guidelines to the content of the programs to which they are applied. A 14+ rating, for example, does not necessarily mean that the program will be appropriate for all 14-year olds. Nor does a PG rating mean that every program to which that classification is applied will be suitable for all families even in the presence of the parent or parents. The classification system is a relatively new set of subjective guidelines which parents across the country must consider in terms of their own judgment about what works in their families. In the end, the labels used by the classification system are only labels. Moreover, they mesh the issues of violence, sex/nudity and language into a single overall rating, thereby requiring a kind of lowest common denominator evaluation by parents in their assessment of the rating as applied to any program. Ultimately, it is the content elements of each rating category which every family must evaluate in order to determine appropriateness for their own viewing.
Canada’s private broadcasters have created industry standards in the form of Codes on ethics, gender portrayal and television violence by which they expect their members will abide. They also created the CBSC, which is the self-regulatory body with the responsibility of administering those Codes, as well as the Code dealing with journalistic practices created by the Radio Television News Directors Association Canada (RTNDA). 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 (###) ###-####.