Sex, (No) Drugs & (Absolutely No) Rock 'n Roll
Parents Television Council’s "MTV Smut Peddlers: Targeting Kids with Sex, Drugs and Alcohol" sports a rather misleading title. Although the report faithfully documents "staggering levels of sex and [bleeped out] foul language" that popped up throughout 171 hrs of MTV programming, the drugs and alcohol findings seem to have been lost in the mix. That said, the Viacom net is demonstrably sex-obsessed, as, of course, is its 12-19 target demo. The 3,056 depictions of sex/forms of nudity and 2,881 verbal sexual references logged by the PTC average out to about 13 sexually charged incidents/hr. Much of the sex is innuendo (our least favorite kind), with the top offenders "Spring Break Survival Guide" and "How to Be a Spring Break Playa." Of the 3,127 profanities bleeped out, a fair amount could be [not] heard on "Road Rules" and "Real World" franchises. PTC dropped the F-bomb or variants 34 times in the 11-pg report.