NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Pro-family advocates are urging people to act quickly in asking their local CBS affiliates to preempt the May 4 broadcast of two back-to-back episodes of “Dexter,” a graphically violent show that portrays a serial killer as its hero.
The show has aired on the premium cable network Showtime for two seasons and was placed on broadcast television this year during the Hollywood writers’ strike when CBS was short on material.
“Dexter introduces audiences to the depths of depravity and indifference as it chronicles the main character’s troubled quest for vigilante justice by celebrating graphic, premeditated murder,” Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said.
What’s worse about the show airing on broadcast television is that on Sunday it’s scheduled to run as early as 9 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones and 8 p.m. in the Central and Mountain zones, PTC said.
The latter regions would find the brutal Dexter violating the so-called family viewing hour, which was established by the Federal Communications Commission in 1975 to protect children from television’s worst content, PTC said. When Dexter debuted on CBS, the network said the show would be “scheduled responsibly in the last hour of primetime.”
“Responsible CBS affiliates must preempt such an early airing of this show for the sake of their communities,” Winter said in a news release May 1. “Affiliates are not required to schedule programs that violate their community decency standards; and if affiliates feel the content is questionable, then they are obligated to preempt it.”
Winter said if a CBS affiliate chooses not to run alternative programming, they can expect the Parents Television Council and its supporters to challenge the affiliate’s broadcast license when it comes up for renewal.
“Last Sunday’s episode featured the main character Dexter fainting in a large pool of blood, which turned out to be blood drained from the bodies of five murder victims,” Winter said. “The scene was absolutely grotesque. And the next few episodes should cause parents great concern, as the Showtime versions contained bloody scenes of graphic violence and foul language. And ultimately, no amount of editing can wipe out the alarming content found on this show, nor the fact that the ‘hero’ is a serial killer.”
Other episodes of Dexter depict him violently dismembering bodies and being rewarded for his behavior, all while the show is given a TV-14 rating, meaning that CBS decided the show would be appropriate for children as young as 14 years of age.
Melissa Henson, director of communication and public education for the Parents Television Council, told Baptist Press she believes the family hour itself has essentially been “murdered.” Most parents want broadcasters to respect the fact that the largest audience of children watching television during the day occurs in the 8 p.m. hour.
“I think families would hope broadcasters would be responsible, therefore, with the content that they put on, but they haven’t been now for several years,” she said.
A PTC study on the family hour released last fall found that Fox was the worst offender, with an average of 20.78 objectionable moments an hour, and the CW was the “cleanest” network with 9.44 such moments an hour.
Winter said his organization has documented a pattern of adult-themed content migrating from premium cable to syndication on broadcast TV as well as a migration of graphic broadcast TV content from the 10 p.m. hour to earlier times of the day.
“We have seen, for example, ‘The Sopranos’ went from HBO to the A&E network, ‘Sex and the City’ went from HBO to the TBS network and from there to general broadcast syndication, where you can still find it on certain broadcast affiliates after a certain time of night,” Henson said. “Dexter went directly from Showtime, a premium cable network, to CBS without stopping off at basic cable along the way. That’s what we’re talking about with that particular trend.”
“NYPD Blue” is one of the most obvious examples of content migrating from the 10 p.m. hour to earlier times, she said.
“It was the first broadcast series to feature a person’s naked backside on broadcast TV. When that show debuted, it was hugely controversial for that reason, and there were a lot of ABC affiliates that refused to carry it,” Henson told BP. “But eventually the furor died down and it became seen as sort of not that shocking anymore. It got to the point where we now see naked backsides throughout primetime viewing hours on all kinds of programs.
“In fact, there was a Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom called ‘Watching Ellie’ a few years back that showed a man running naked down the hall. They showed his naked buttocks, and nobody said anything because it had become acceptable,” she said. “The 10 o’clock show had paved the way for that kind of content to appear on broadcast TV.”
CBS affiliates would do well to preempt Dexter with alternative programming May 4, Henson said.
“There was a broadcast affiliate a few years back that refused to air the Fox reality series ‘Married by America’ and instead they ran reruns of Andy Griffith,” she said. “And as I recall, they beat their competitors by doing that. They have a lot of options.”
Henson said Dexter continues to air on Showtime and new episodes are being filmed, but she hopes future seasons will not make it to CBS because broadcasters need to recognize their responsibility to cooperate with parents who are trying to raise healthy children.
“Kids are incredibly vulnerable and impressionable. Television has been described as the super peer, and I think that’s a very appropriate description because if you think about how much influence your child’s friends exert on them in the decisions they make, they talk about peer pressure at school all the time,” Henson said. “So think about the pressure that television puts on kids to act and dress and behave a certain way. It’s like peer pressure times 10 or times 100.
“It’s much more intense because it seems to present to the child a picture of average or normal, expected behavior. So children develop a lot of opinions about male/female relationships, about sex, about alcohol consumption, about a lot of things from what they see on TV,” she added. “I think it is important for broadcasters to recognize that and to be responsible with the messages they’re putting out there.”
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Erin Roach is a staff writer for Baptist Press. For assistance in contacting your local CBS affiliate, visit www.parentstv.org.
