Language on network TV in prime time

I mentioned the Shield for three reasons.

1.) I watch it and am therefore familiar with it.

2.) It is a great example of how far things have changed and really illustrates how you can get away with soooooo much more now than ever before. I mean, in the first episode they killed a cop. In Season Three, a man was forcibly raped at gunpoint and short of showing the d**k in his mouth, it was pretty graphic. Later, one of the detectives strangles a cat in front of the camera.

3.) By comparison, anything else seems tame.

Her being a main character who people like, at least IMO, would make it so much worse for young children watching and isn't this how the whole debate got started?

 

I guess I just don't draw the parallels between cable shows and network shows as clearly as you do. I think they're different monsters.

 

My 5-year-old is not up watching primetime TV so I don't give a fuck. What pisses me off are the horror movie commercials that turn up on any channel at any time.

One minute you're watching Wheel of Fortune and then the next there's people screaming holy terror while some disfigured ghost kid's face appears. I wish they would wait to show those.

 

A point I hadn't thought about, and a valid one.

 

Holy crap! I've been Sig'd.

Oh, and staying on topic, I agree that sucks but in all fairness, the thought of some old folks watching Wheel of Fortune and then getting scared shitless makes me chuckle.

 

Technically speaking, cable networks can do whatever they want (or at least they could before the FCC unjustly extended its tentacles). They simply don't because they don't want to piss off advertisers. The broadcast networks can't because of the FCC.

And to go back to the stank-ass ho thing, that's now what's funny (and I mean that in a general sense). I mean, watching the patriarch of a family of five do something stupid in the first seven minutes, try to figure out how to fix it in the second seven minutes and then fix it with loving approval from the all-knowing, all-wise, never-wrong wife in the final seven minutes is simply played out. I would never, ever watch a show like that again. I feel ashamed for having ever watched them.

At least on the Cosby Show, the kids fucked up from time to time. That was sorta different.

 

Exactly what pisses me off. I'll watch a baseball game in the afternoon and the commercials are for horror movies. I have a 10 year old and a 3 year old. If shit like that pops up during "The Shield," fine.. but baseball? I need to worry about my kid being terrified by something during a baseball game?

(On a side note, my TV station used to run children's stuff on Saturday morning followed by a movie. I once asked my then-GM why we were running "Little Bill" back to back with "Robocop II" at 10 am on a Saturday. My then-GM, who is a good guy and has no children, seemed to not even understand the question.)

 

I just make the comparison because it seems a lot of the newer shows out now (The Sarah Connor Chronicles, House, Heroes, Prison Break) really got kicked into gear right around the same time those FX shows go up and running. You could also make the case that 24 broke some of the ground on allowing more violence on primetime TV as well.

As for the devolution of sitcoms, well, I suppose you could say Friends was really the last one of the type you were talking about. Now the closest you see (and, I'll admit I've never seen Samantha Who or The New Adventure of Old Christine so I don't include them in here) is something like HIMYM, which really, is just the latest in a long line of 30-minute, non-formulative, comedies.

Lastly, 'Stank Ass Ho' is, as you said, just one of those slang terms that's popular right now. Kind of like "Jive Turkey" and "Square" I suppose.

I just can't wait until I hear some character drop and F-Bomb on NBC. I really can't.

 

Actually, Friends became less and less formulaic as the seasons went on. It pioneered what we're now seeing with nearly every show being a serial. It seemed like in the later years that every episode of Friends could have had a To Be Continued labeled on it. Things carried over from show to show and in more than a self-referential way and weren't simply forgotten or become irrelevant by the next week, the way they did on Cheers or the Cosby Show. What show isn't like that now?

 

I agree that HBO and Showtime series becoming popular made salty language more accessible and expected. And how many households don't have cable or haven't had cable at some point? 2-3 percent? And network TV and producers of network TV shows don't want to be hobbled by not having the saltiness club in the bag.

 

Same here. I know it's silly, but I can't help thinking how much I would love to hear his response to a thread like this.

You know what he would call the things that are disturbing IJAG? Progress.

Honestly, I am sometimes surprised by what we hear now on network television. But I'm not going to sit here and insist that the censors protect my little girl from the evils of potty language. That's my job.

 

someone mentioned stern...to me, his show lost a lot of the allure it had once he and gary and artie started saying "fuck" and "shit" a lot. (there are other reasons he's jumped the shark, too... getting divorced, dating a model, getting remarried, moving to satellite and making megabucks... those things all ate into his normal guy persona, too, but i think the cursing adds to it as well.)

mr. babar, i've become more lax on language getting into the paper when editing stories. damn, i used to work around unless it was in a direct quote...now, not so much. didn't the wapo publish dick cheney's "fuck you" to leahy a few years ago on a1? to me, that's a pretty good read on the whole thing.

to me, cock and c**t sound 10 times "dirtier" than f**k.