OTTAWA – CTV should have aired an American crime drama program after the Watershed hour of 9:00 pm, and should have given it an 18+ rating, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has found.
A viewer in Manitoba complained that 7:00 pm was too early to show a particular episode of Criminal Minds which was broadcast on CTV on March 18, 2009. CTV, which had rated it 14+, noted that it aired viewer advisories during the broadcast.
Criminal Minds is a dramatic program that follows a group of FBI investigators who develop psychological profiles of serial killers in order to help solve crimes. The episode in question was about the group’s efforts to catch a killer known as the ‘Boston Reaper’. It included a number of scenes of the Reaper’s violent crimes, including striking a man in the face with a crowbar, slicing a woman’s throat, stabbing another man, shooting another woman in the forehead, a shooting rampage on a city bus, as well as the Reaper slicing his own wrists and drinking the blood in an attempt to escape prison.
The CBSC’s National Conventional Television Panel examined the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ violence code, which requires that scenes intended exclusively for adult audiences shall only be broadcast after 9:00 pm.
The Panel concluded that the scenes in this episode of Criminal Minds were intended for adults.
“The violence is sufficiently frequent; there are no less than twelve individual murders committed, four of individuals in the driver or passenger seats of their cars, seven of persons on a bus, and one off-screen of a police officer”, the Panel said in its decision. “The killings are explicitly depicted, and for those not seen directly, the gory and grisly consequences are graphically displayed. There is tangible fear in the individuals about to meet their end, and short-term terror-provoking suspense in the viewer, awaiting those executions. The Panel concludes that any pre-Watershed broadcast of this episode of Criminal Minds breaches the scheduling provision of the CAB Violence Code.”
The Panel noted that the simultaneous substitution “exception” to the Watershed rule did not apply in this case because this episode was not simultaneously substituted in this market on this occasion. It also concluded that the 14+ rating was too low, and that the “frequent, explicit, graphic, and gory” violence necessitated an 18+ rating.
