OTTAWA – An episode of a science fiction series that contained numerous violent scenes should only have been broadcast after 9:00 PM and contain appropriate viewer advisories, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has ruled.
The CBSC investigated the series finale of Le dôme that aired on TVA on March 29, 2016 at 8:00 PM. Le dôme is the French-language dubbed version of the series Under the Dome, based on a story by Stephen King.
The episode contained scenes in which a man beats another man over the head with a metal ball, a man stabs another man in the abdomen with a piece of metal rebar, and a scene of a man stabbing his own adult son to death. A viewer complained that this type of violence should not be aired before 9:00 PM.
TVA aired the episode at 8:00 PM with no viewer advisories, but did provide a 13+ classification icon. The broadcaster said that it believed that the violence was not sufficiently graphic to necessitate a late evening time slot, but it did agree that it should have aired viewer advisories.
The CBSC’s French-Language Panel examined the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Violence Code. The majority of the Panel found that the accumulation of graphic violence meant the program required a post-9:00 PM time slot, meaning that TVA violated the scheduling clause of the code. A minority of Panel adjudicators dissented on this point. They unanimously agreed, however, that viewer advisories were needed, and that 13+ was an acceptable rating.
