TV Watershed Gets Ofcom Focus

Broadcasters have been warned over the TV watershed with the regulator, Ofcom issuing new guidance and telling TV companies to be more careful about programmes they show before 9pm that could be unsuitable for children.
This is part of Ofcom's ongoing work on the enforcement of the 9pm watershed, in line with its statutory duty to protect under-eighteens. The new guidance follows a series of recent meetings with broadcasters to ensure they are clear about the standards Ofcom expects from them.
The guidance aims to help broadcasters comply with the Broadcasting Code rules for pre-watershed content, with specific focus on programmes broadcast before and soon after the watershed and music videos broadcast before the watershed.
They said that broadcasters are expected to pay particular attention to family viewing programmes, trailers and soaps.
Ofcom has also advised broadcasters to take particular care with post-watershed content that has been edited for pre-watershed viewing, for example by masking or editing offensive language.
Ofcom already regularly conducts research among parents to monitor the level of concerns about the content their children watch on television.
For example, fewer parents are now concerned about the TV programmes their children watch (31%) than they were in 2009 (36%).
They also measures parents' views about the time of the watershed and the amount of TV regulation with 77% of parents thinking the watershed is at the right time, and 73% believe the amount of regulation of television is 'about right'.
In recent months Ofcom has investigated several cases involving pre-watershed material that it judged to be unsuitable - or close to the limits of acceptability - for children.
As a result, Ofcom has conducted new research into parents' and teenagers' views on pre-watershed TV programmes.
The types of pre-watershed programmes that caused concern to the parents surveyed were soaps (14%) and film (14%), followed by reality programmes (12%) and music videos (11%).
Some 21% of all parents surveyed mentioned concerns about nudity or sexual content, one in five (20%) were concerned about violence, and one in six (17%) had concerns about offensive language.
Just under a quarter (23%) of teenagers surveyed said that over the past 12 months they had seen something on TV before the watershed that had made them uncomfortable or had offended them.
Sexually explicit content concerned 7% of teens surveyed, while 4% expressed concerns about offensive language, and 4% had concerns about violence.
(BMcC/CD)