OTTAWA – Washed-up punkster Billy Idol and the body parts certain fans present to him isn’t necessarily a violation of Canadian broadcast standards, even if broadcast before 9 p.m., the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said Wednesday.
This April, TVA aired an episode of Star Système – a magazine-style entertainment program that examines the world of pop culture and show business – where the first segment of that episode was about Idol at a record-signing session at an American music store.
During the segment, one of Idol’s female fans asked him to sign her chest. “The singer complied by signing just above the neck of her low-cut top. Idol next posed for a photograph with another female fan and pretended to lick her breasts. One of the Star Système hosts then spoke with another female fan who was wearing a black mesh top that readily revealed her large breasts, which, she confirmed to the reporter, were recent implants. When she approached the singer, Billy Idol lifted her top and kissed one of her bare breasts,” says the CBSC release.
A complainant, “who characterized the happenings in more overt sexual terms than the Quebec Panel considered accurate,” said the release, “felt that such programming was appropriate only after 9:00 pm. The Quebec Panel disagreed and referred to previous decisions involving bare breasts in Ontario and Quebec.
“While the segment involved in the present decision is hardly a news item in the sense of the Ontario coverage, it has a reportage flavour to it. It also has an element of good-natured humour. The bottom line is that the Quebec Panel finds that it is not… sexually explicit by any standard a CBSC Panel would bring to bear in such a matter. There is no reason for such a segment to be restricted to a post-Watershed broadcast.”
The program should have carried a viewer advisory, however, said the panel.
