OTTAWA – A commercial for an adult telephone line that aired during a children’s show did not breach any broadcast codes, the majority of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has determined. Two of its adjudicators, however, dissented with the decision.
The CBSC’s National Specialty Services Panel examined the commercial which aired on animated specialty service Teletoon Retro at 1:30 am ET on May 16, 2011. The 30-second spot was for a service called The Night Exchange and featured a group of attractive women who encouraged viewers to call in order to “show off your fun side”. One woman said “sometimes it gets so good. We decide to take it to the next level.” All of the women were fully clothed and there was no sexually explicit material in the commercial, nor anything that informed viewers that the service was a sex line rather than just an adult chat line.
A viewer complained that the commercial appeared during the show Batman: The Animated Series which the network had rated as C8 (targeted at children 8 years and older). The viewer said that he recorded the show for his children to watch, and that a program for children should not contain adult advertisements regardless of the time at which it is broadcast.
The majority of Panel concluded that, even though the station rated the program C8, it was not really targeted at children when aired at 1:30 am. The broadcaster was, therefore, allowed to air adult-oriented commercials during the watershed period of 9:00 pm to 6:00 am, and there was no violation of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics.
Two CBSC adjudicators opposed that determination, arguing that the conclusion of the majority means that a “children’s program” ceases to be a children’s program, and ratings become meaningless, during the watershed period. They stated that this result is illogical and unfair to viewers who have taken the time to use the rating system to set their television blocking technology.
