Suburban delved into TV content debate

By Joel Goldenberg, October 10th, 2012

Boy, have times changed.
During my recent vacation in New York City, I had a chance to watch some morning television for the first time in a while. Thirty years ago, the networks would show cartoons, shows focusing on fashion, game shows and even religious-oriented programs. Some still do.
What do we get now?
The several DNA tests proving or disproving fatherhood on Maury Povich's show, the near-pornographic subjects of Jerry Springer's show and, on one purported medically-oriented show I saw, male and female guests being asked to fondle pretty accurate replicas of private male and female body parts.
This is morning television. And there aren't too many limits on the subject lines of prime-time comedies and dramas.
The situation in the early-to-mid 1970s was very different. All In The Family, featuring quite frank dialogue and (horrors) the sound of a toilet flushing, was said to have ushered in a revolution. Some viewers and sponsors recoiled when the CBS comedy Maude dealt with the subject of abortion. And some very mild double entendres were being censored on shows like Welcome Back, Kotter.
The Suburban delved into this subject in its Sept. 28, 1977 issue - which was an interesting time in terms of television content. While violence was decreasing on shows like Starsky and Hutch as a result of external pressure, the sex content was increasing with the many double entendres on shows like Three's Company.
In The Suburban, writer Philip Rose pointed out that an especially controversial show was premiering that fall season, Soap, “with a cast including a mother and daughter who are both having an affair with the same tennis instructor, one philandering husband, one impotent husband and a homosexual son pondering the possibility of a sex change operation. A far cry from Father Knows Best.”
Rose opined that “those who would set limitations on either subject (sex and violence) wrap themselves in the concept of 'family viewing'... [that] the transmission of programming must be done with the recognition that children may be watching.
“The problem is that, carried to extremes, this argument would reduce the world's most pervasive communications instrument to a toy for audiences of children, young and old,” he very reasonably added. “Still, the argument has an element of validity and obviously, any solution demands reason and balance.”
There's not too much balance today. While the issue of controversial TV content may have been a hot issue 35 years ago, the almost limitless subject matter of network television (cable has even less limits) is now nearly matter of fact.