OTTAWA – Suggestive televised promotional spots for a Toronto radio station have resulted in a split panel at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC).
The CBSC investigated a series of promotional spots for Bell Media’s CHUM-FM radio station which aired in September 2016 on CTV Toronto and CP24. The promos featured a muscular white male actor standing against a white background. At the beginning, he is wearing clothes, but a female voice from off-screen directs him to remove his shirt and then his pants so he is holding only a card with the radio station logo covering his crotch. The female voice then asks for a smaller logo card, which appears. She then asks for one take without the logo, at which point the promo ends. Throughout the process, the male is trying to deliver the station’s tag lines, “Nothing but today’s best music on CHUM-FM”, “The naked truth”, “All stripped down to today’s best music”, and “It’s the whole package”.
The CBSC said that it received 11 complaints from viewers who felt that the promos exploited and objectified the man. They suggested that had it been a male director asking a female to undress, the television stations would not have aired the spots.
The CBSC’s English-Language Panel examined the complaints under the Stereotying, Exploitation and Degradation clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Equitable Portrayal Code as well as the Sex-Role Stereotyping and Advertising clauses of the CAB Code of Ethics.
The adjudicators who found no breach said that they came to that conclusion because the spots were intended to be humorous, reversed historical stereotypes in that it was the female director calling the shots with a male actor, and there was nothing lascivious in the female director’s demeanour that suggested she was degrading the man. The adjudicators who concluded that there were code breaches said that there was clearly a gender power imbalance in that a female was directing a male to remove his clothing for no other reason than her own desire, and that he seemed obliged to obey. Those adjudicators stated that such portrayals are unacceptable regardless of which genders are in the dominant and subordinate positions.
With a split decision, the broadcasters are not required to announce the CBSC’s findings on air since there is technically no breach of any code.
