Reverend Searching for "Booty Free" Programming Targets MTV and BET
/By Cheryl Wetzstein
Three music-video shows that air during daytime or early evening hours are heavily laced with sexual imagery, explicit language, violence and drug use, a television watchdog organization says in a report released yesterday.
This kind of adult content should not be marketed to children, said the Rev. Delman L. Coates, founder of the Enough is Enough Campaign.
"It's these images of black men as gangsters and thugs, and criminals [and] black women as being hypersexualized — which are actually long-standing stereotypes of black people that have endured since slavery — that I felt really needed to be challenged," Mr. Coates said, in explaining why he started the campaign last summer and has been leading weekly protests at entertainment executives' homes.
The Enough is Enough Campaign and other groups, like Industry Ears and National Congress of Black Women (NCBW), are "equally disturbed about the marketing and distribution of often times what amounts to soft pornographic themes to children and youth," Mr. Coates said at a press conference yesterday.
"And that's really what it is, a kind of coarsening of American popular culture," he said.
The three shows, which aired on Black Entertainment Television (BET) or MTV in December and last month, offered viewers offensive or adult content about once every minute, said the report, "The Rap on Rap," from the Parents Television Council (PTC).
In comparison, prime time broadcast "family hour" programming has instances of violent, profane or sexual content about once every five minutes, PTC President Tim Winter said.
The three shows analyzed were "Sucker Free on MTV," "106 & Park" and "Rap City" on BET. The shows appeared during afternoon or early evening hours. "Sucker Free on MTV" music videos were rated TV-14, which advises that parental guidance is "strongly advised," while most of the BET shows carried the milder TV-PG rating. [MORE]
Three music-video shows that air during daytime or early evening hours are heavily laced with sexual imagery, explicit language, violence and drug use, a television watchdog organization says in a report released yesterday.
This kind of adult content should not be marketed to children, said the Rev. Delman L. Coates, founder of the Enough is Enough Campaign.
"It's these images of black men as gangsters and thugs, and criminals [and] black women as being hypersexualized — which are actually long-standing stereotypes of black people that have endured since slavery — that I felt really needed to be challenged," Mr. Coates said, in explaining why he started the campaign last summer and has been leading weekly protests at entertainment executives' homes.
The Enough is Enough Campaign and other groups, like Industry Ears and National Congress of Black Women (NCBW), are "equally disturbed about the marketing and distribution of often times what amounts to soft pornographic themes to children and youth," Mr. Coates said at a press conference yesterday.
"And that's really what it is, a kind of coarsening of American popular culture," he said.
The three shows, which aired on Black Entertainment Television (BET) or MTV in December and last month, offered viewers offensive or adult content about once every minute, said the report, "The Rap on Rap," from the Parents Television Council (PTC).
In comparison, prime time broadcast "family hour" programming has instances of violent, profane or sexual content about once every five minutes, PTC President Tim Winter said.
The three shows analyzed were "Sucker Free on MTV," "106 & Park" and "Rap City" on BET. The shows appeared during afternoon or early evening hours. "Sucker Free on MTV" music videos were rated TV-14, which advises that parental guidance is "strongly advised," while most of the BET shows carried the milder TV-PG rating. [MORE]
