OTTAWA – A French-language singing competition that contained unedited coarse language violated broadcast codes for airing too early in the evening, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has ruled.
The CBSC examined an episode of La Voix, a singing competition program featuring “coaches” from the Quebec music industry who choose singers to form their “teams”. The singers are chosen based on their voices alone; the coaches do not see the contestants before selecting them.
An episode that aired on January 15, 2015 at 7:30 PM on CHOT-DT (Gatineau, Quebec) contained three instances of coarse language. The coaches used the words “tabarnac’” and “ʼostie” when commenting on the singers’ performances, prompting a complaint from a viewer that this language was not appropriate during a program in the early evening watched by families with young children. The viewer emphasized that the program was not live, so the coarse language could easily have been edited out prior to broadcast.
On the episode in question, RNC Media-owned CHOT explained that the program originated with the TVA network. CHOT broadcast La Voix as part of its network affiliation agreement with TVA and, as per the terms of that agreement, was not allowed to modify the program in any way.
The CBSC’s Quebec Regional Panel concluded that the broadcast violated Clause 10 of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics which requires that coarse language intended for adults only be broadcast after the watershed hour of 9:00 PM (and before 6:00 AM). The broadcast also breached Clause 11 of that code because it did not contain any viewer advisories.
The Panel acknowledged the conundrum caused by the network affiliation agreement: under the Broadcasting Act and related regulations, individual stations are responsible for all material that they air, but, at the same time the affiliation agreements prevent them from modifying network programming. The Panel suggested that “in future, complaints concerning network programs might better be handled directly by the network and not the affiliated stations.”
