OTTAWA – The CRTC has agreed with a decision made by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) over a complaint about the broadcast of a show called Bully Beatdown on MTV Canada.
Bully Beatdown is a reality program hosted by Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) champion Jason “Mayhem” Miller that allows victims of bullying to get even with their bullies by inviting those bullies to compete against a real MMA fighter. After receiving a complaint about the show from a viewer, the CBSC issued a decision last July which determined that the show did not breach the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ violence code.
But the viewer appealed the CBSC’s decision to the Commission, specifically the finding related to Article 3.1.1 of the violence code which is also known as the Watershed hour provision. The complainant asserted that he had supplied to the CBSC, prior to the issuance of its decision, information that showed plans by MTV Canada to broadcast future episodes of the program prior to the watershed hour of 9:00 p.m.
After viewing the broadcast, the Commission determined that the show’s fight scenes “were not of such an explicit or graphic nature as to necessitate relegation of the broadcast of the program to post-watershed hours”, and agreed with the broadcaster’s position that the overall context of the program is not to support or promote violence or retaliation, but rather to portray both sides of the bully story and to encourage conversation on a range of issues that may be of concern to many people.
