Bad TV fare

THERE is soundness in the recent effort of the government to protect television audience from the ill-effects of programs that tend to color the people’s expression of a commercial show just so these programs would generate an impressive rating.

Audience response to the TV programs determines their survival or continuity.

Winning a good rating marks the success of a TV program designed for mass audience and dependent for its survival on continued patronage. High rating brings in advertisements or commercials as this would mean increased sale of the products. In turn, pushing consumer products for the mass market engenders strong competition for a mass audience.

I think it is the competition for the mass market that forces advertisers to seek materials of any kind to use, so long as these generate sales. This even if the commercial, in a matter of speaking, has to skirt what is decent and moral just so the show could gain appreciation and acceptability by the mass audience, and thus win acceptability and good ratings.

However, as many may have noticed, there is also basic deterioration of the commercial script due to the competition. In a way, it is his competition between or among advertisers that somehow also affects the standard and quality of morality and decency in television commercial shows. It is good that some commercial houses and advertising agencies have established certain guidelines and limits to the advertising agreements they are willing to accommodate.

In a society where consumerism is also a factor to success in business, morality in advertising could be compromised. There was a time when man and woman lying together in a room in bed in an ad was taboo, or doing a heated so-called wet kissing scene is not allowed in a movie. This was in the 1950s to the 1980s.

But it is no longer so in recent years. Our society has become a permissive one, and the kids today have been taking parents’ permission to stay out at night, for granted.

There is a kind of looseness in the kids’ sense of morality these days.

The recent passage of the so-called cybercrime law in Congress indicate that the concerned elders of our society are taking notice of how our young ones are making good use of the advances in information technology, and how a sense of permissiveness has pervaded our movie and television industries.

Republic Act 101751 maybe delimiting our freedom of expression, but it is also protecting the honor and dignity of the users and consumers of information today. In a sense, the move to amend the bill is really an effort, too, to make our contemporary lives livable, and our enjoyment of advances in technology supportive of our existence and survival.