TV's Rising Body Count
 

The highly violent nature of the new television season was the topic of much press coverage when the networks rolled out their fall schedules. So when the Associated Press decided to examine how much bloodier this season has been than in the past, they came to the Parents Television Council. The Associated Press asked us to use our-state-of-the-art tracking system to quantify TV's recent obsession with gore. 

The results?

During the last week of September, there were 63 dead bodies visible during prime time on the six broadcast networks.  That's up sharply from the 27 bodies counted during the same week in 2004.  The shocking statistic, released in November, drove headlines around the country and internationally as well.

Here are some recent examples:

• The lead character in Fox's Bones discovering a badly decomposed body hanging in a tree, crows picking on the remains.  The maggot-covered head falls off and lands in Bones' hands.

• On CBS' C.S.I. New York a man falling after trying to climb the outside of a skyscraper hits a ledge and a large chunk of bloody flesh falls to the street.

• A driver speeds up to hit a woman coming out of the clinic on NBC's Inconceivable. She is shown hitting the windshield, flying through the air and lying on the ground with blood dripping from her mouth and nose.

• Then there's the gunshot victim with blood spurting from his chest, the man screaming as he's being burned alive, the murdered woman whose eyes have been removed and eyelids stitched shut, and the medical examiner using pliers to pull a diamond from a dead man's chest.

All of this and more in one glorious week of gory TV.

In fact, the AP story led with this sentence, "The body count in prime-time television these days rivals that of a war zone."

This season is, by far, the bloodiest yet on broadcast television and we should be alarmed.  Innumerable studies have documented the link between a child's exposure to media violence and subsequent aggressive and anti-social behavior.  Limiting exposure to such graphic content should be a priority for us all.  It starts with parents actively monitoring their children's television watching.  In addition, advertisers need to be made aware that they contribute to a culture of violence by underwriting this content.