Welcome to the Web companion for One Foot on the Floor: The Curious Evolution of Sex on Television, the book about the history of sex and controversy on television and related screens. One Foot, now available on Kindle in an updated and expanded electronic edition, takes the story from TV’s beginnings through the February 2012 sweeps. Check back here. This is where the story continues. Continue reading
Blachman
It’s been called the worst, most sexist program in television history.
That’s a lot to live down to. But the press descriptions and the excerpts on YouTube make it seem as if the show has actually set the new standard.
It’s called Blachman, after its creator, Thomas Blachman, who heretofore was best known for his role as a judge on the Danish version of X-Factor. His new show has a simple, but shocking hook: Continue reading
There’s a new contender for dumbest move by a media outlet.
For a while it looked like WPIX-TV in New York, with its recent Best Sex Ever informercial telecast during a heavy children’s viewing period on a Sunday morning, had it wrapped up. (Click here to read about that.)
But now comes WHPT-FM, a Cox Media radio station in Tampa, Florida, which posted a photo of a teenager with Down syndrome on its website that it first altered to make it appear he was holding a sign saying “Retarded News.” Continue reading
MSNBC, the “lean forward” cable news network widely regarded as the left’s answer to Fox News, has been knocked back to a new year-to-date low in the ratings. Blame Benghazi, the I.R.S. and The AP — shorthand for Washington’s current political-scandal triple play.
Will one of these “scandals” – the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya; the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service was looking into the tax exempt status of various Tea Party and similar right-wing groups; and the separate revelation that the Justice Department has subpoenaed phone records for Associated Press and other reporters, ostensibly on national security grounds — prove to be the cudgel the Republicans have been looking for since Day One of the Obama Administration, the one big enough to bludgeon the president right out of the Oval Office? It’s unlikely at this point, but that doesn’t mean congressional Republicans won’t try and try and try again. Continue reading
Up until now, the prevailing idea in nutritional-advocacy circles has been that kids need protection from junk-food advertising because they’re not old enough to have developed the critical faculties necessary to evaluate what they’re seeing.
Now we have an academic study that purports to show that parents who watch junk-food advertising are swayed by it, too. Continue reading
Though it often seems overdone, it’s sometimes hard not to sympathize with the outrage of the socially conservative guardians of public morals, groups like the Parents Television Council.
Case in point: Best Sex Ever.
That’s the name of an infomercial from a company that promises “orgasmic sex” when you take its Viagra-like erection pills.
The problem: It aired at 10 a.m., on a recent Sunday, on WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City. That’s when kids are watching, maybe without adult supervision. And maybe they’re channel-surfing, looking for cartoons. Continue reading
Now that the CEO of Cumulus Media has talked to analysts and press, we know definitively that Rush Limbaugh’s intemperate rants did cost the big radio company money. Lots of it.
After Limbaugh made those remarks, national advertisers, facing consumer boycotts, defected in droves from Rush’s show, which is carried by Cumulus, the nation’s second-biggest radio company, in 38 markets. And the Rush advertiser defections continue to have an effect, more than a year after he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” for daring to advocate for contraceptive coverage in her employer-provided medical insurance. Continue reading
Burger sales are falling at McDonald’s.
That’s what The Wall Street Journal reported recently, calling it a bad sign for the broader fast food industry.
That drop comes as legislation to regulate and curtail junk food is under consideration in legislatures around the country. Proposed laws could keep it out of schools and vending machines in public buildings. Madison Avenue and Broadcast Row fear that regulations limiting junk-food TV ads could be next. Continue reading
‘Smash’
In with the new, out with the old — it happens every Spring in TV Land, when the broadcast networks unleash the hoopla and the superlatives to tout their new shows.
That celebration takes place immediately after the virtually inevitable wholesale slaughter of last year’s highly touted new shows, which usually just merits a shrug: After all, it’s Chinatown, Jake. Continue reading
Senior citizens in the United Kingdom, those 65 or older, think there’s just the right amount of sex on the telly. Why is that significant?
Whether you’re for it or against it, there’s little disagreement that it’s a golden age for racy broadcast television. And that’s true on both sides of the Atlantic.
The conventional wisdom, on the U.S. side of the Pond anyway, is that older folks are the most conservative age group in society, so the assumption is they’re more likely to frown at nudity or racy language. Continue reading
The Upfronts, Manhattan’s venerable annual Spring rite, reach their climax this week when the big broadcast networks take their turn, wining and dining advertisers (and the press) while unveiling their new-season shows.
Of course, this year, as every year, the new-show pick-ups are leaking out all over the place in advance of the official announcements. That’s because before they tell the advertisers, the networks have to inform the producers, and the producers (and the actors and their agents) tip off the press.
The big trend so far: Continue reading
