CBS Urged to Cease Airing ‘Pornified’ Content on Broadcast TV

LOS ANGELES (March 24, 2021) – The Parents Television Council is calling on CBS to ensure that pornified content is never aired on the broadcast network again, in light of the recent Grammy broadcast that included a performance of a sexually explicit song, WAP.

“The airing of such pornified content during the recent Grammy broadcast is inexcusable, especially for a television network that dumped its own senior executives over alleged #MeToo concerns,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “CBS violated the trust of millions of families and exposed potentially millions of children to the sexually-explicit performance of ‘WAP.’ The performance of this song never should have made it onto primetime broadcast television, and we are calling on concerned members of the public to sign our petition calling for it never to happen again. ”

“The broadcast was rated as appropriate for children to watch, which naturally caught many parents off-guard. Regardless of the age rating, there is no amount of warning that can mitigate the harm that messages like these send to impressionable teenaged boys and girls. Not only is it the height of hypocrisy for CBS to be propagating the message that girls are nothing more than sexual objects, it is morally and ethically bankrupt.

“Broadcasters keep pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable for the broadcast medium, but CBS has crossed a line with the recent Grammys. It is time for CBS to ensure that pornified content never makes it to air again,” Winter said.

Many prominent advocates and members of the media spoke out about the recent Grammys broadcast, including:

• Paul Porter, a former programmer for Black Entertainment Television (BET) and co-founder of Industry Ears, a nonprofit organization concerned with the impact of media on children and communities of color, said of the live performance of “Wet *ss P*ssy,” during last week’s Grammy’s, “CBS and the Grammys gave strip clubs and soft-porn their biggest endorsement yet. The raunchiness of cable unfortunately has found a new home at CBS.”
  

• Nicole Clark, a former elite model and director of “Cover Girl Culture” and “Seeing Through the Media Matrix” wrote, “Nothing about the lyrics are empowering for anyone. Call it freedom of speech – but it’s not freeing. The lyrics imprison girls as sexual objects. They debase women. They rob women of their ability to be financially independent… The formula for success and happiness they preach is that what girls have to offer men is merely sex.”
  

• Fox News host Tucker Carlson said, of the CBS executives that green-lighted this performance, "It's hard not to conclude they’re not intentionally trying to degrade our culture and hurt our children.”
  

• A CNN Senior Editor Tweeted, “Wow this is on network TV #CardiB #MeganTheeStallion”