Tim Winter urges Board to reconsider the inaccurate age-based rating
 

LOS ANGELES (December 13, 2012) – This week Parents Television Council President Tim Winter wrote to former Senator Gordon Smith, Chairman of the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board urging the organization to address the blatant misrating of the AMC program The Walking Dead.

“Throughout its run, the AMC program The Walking Dead has featured some of the most graphic and brutally intense violence and gore imaginable. In the current season alone the show has depicted hundreds of scenes of grisly murder both of living and “undead,” but human, characters. The intensely violent content has included depictions of the cleaving of human skulls with a machete, extreme gun violence including graphic depictions of blood and brains splattering after gunshot wounds, and the use of a sharpened human bone as a weapon to stab another character,” wrote PTC President Tim Winter.

“The program also has contained numerous instances of crude indecent language, including the unedited use of the word “shit” as well as many other instances of foul language.

“Clearly, this is content appropriate to an adult-only audience, but AMC has rated every single episode of The Walking Dead as suitable for a 14 year old child.

“PTC members from around the country have sent thousands of letters to AMC asking them to reconsider the inaccurate age-based rating it has assigned to the program, but with no response. Therefore, on behalf of our better than 1.3 million members, we call on you and the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board to immediately take any necessary steps to insure that this program is rated accurately, appropriately and for the audience for which the show is designed. For the TV Ratings system to work as it is designed, the board and you as its chairman can do no less,” concluded Winter.

PTC awaits Senator Smith and the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board’s reply so they may inform members and the public that parents can count on the TV Ratings system to help them make the best viewing decisions for their families.