Television Censorship

Thanks for your comments on my presentation. I feel very strongly about the issue of Television Control by the FCC. You can probably tell from my presentation that I do not believe that the FCC should be responsible for determining what children are allowed to see. I believe that responsibility is in the hands of the parents and they should be aware of what they children are watching and set limits. I also felt that Bonnie shared this opinion and presented a similar idea from her presentation.
Bonnie’s presentation dealt a little more directly with the FCC and television censorship during “the family hour.” My opinion is that with small children, all TV should be “family hour” time and the parents should know what exactly their children are watching and how much television they watch. I was a little surprised by the numbers that Bonnie showed, but I still believe that parents should censor their children’s TV time and explain the truth of the use of profane language and violence to them. I was also interested in the idea that people do not focus on the sexuality or violence in “family” TV but rather are upset by the language. As I have said in class I felt that this true because parents can see the direct result of foul language. If a child hears a word on TV and then repeats it the next day, the parent can blame the show. But if a child sees sex on TV their whole life and then has sex when they are 14 or 15, the parent is likely to blame hormones or their child’s partner.
My presentation had a lot of ideas wrapped into one thing. I had opinions on the FCC and TV censorship, I also had ideas of advertising, and of sexuality in TV. I felt that the fact that sponsors pulled out of “Desperate Housewives” just to satisfy the Parent’s Television Council was ridiculous (although from a business standpoint, I understand why they had to do it). I also wanted to point out that the show is not any more explicit than other shows on TV today.