http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1275268The Parents Television Council (PTC) is calling a new show set to premiere tonight (Monday, Jan. 17) on MTV as "the most dangerous program that has ever been foisted on children."
MTV logoThe series website describes the program as "a wild ride through the lives of a group of high school friends stumbling through the mine field of adolescence...and stepping on most of the mines as they go." Continuing its description: "Be it sex, drugs, the breadth of friendships or the depth of heartbreaks, Skins is an emotional mosh-pit that slams through the insanity of teenage years."
In addition, the website includes an interactive map asking visitors to “post the truth about the biggest parties, heartbreak, friends, sex, and every kind of trouble.” The program about teens carries a TV-MA rating -- for "mature audiences only."
PTC spokeswoman Melissa Henson says MTV is being "disingenuous" in kicking off the new series. Henson says based on what her group has seen from the BBC series and trailers for the new MTV version, Skins takes a very disturbing look at teenage life. She says it portrays "lots of promiscuous teenage sex, lots of drug use, underage alcohol consumption; dangerous, reckless, irresponsible behavior...all of which goes rewarded or without consequence; lack of any kind of parental involvement or supervision in the lives of these kids."
Melissa Henson PTCHenson tells OneNewsNow she believes MTV is deliberately marketing Skins to a teen audience -- both through extensive advertising during MTV's Jersey Shore, which has a substantial number of young viewers, and ads placed on websites like Teen.com.
"So it's really very disingenuous for MTV to claim that they're behaving responsibly by putting an MA rating on the show or putting it on at 10:00 at night when they are so clearly trying to market it to young audiences," Henson argues.
She points out that many of the actors and actresses on the show are under 18, so according to the MTV rating they are too young to watch the show they are performing in. In fact, PTC says according to video trailers available to the public, the series "make
sexual objects of almost every single one its characters" and asks viewers to approve of those characterizations.
The PTC spokeswoman argues the new show is a reminder of the need for cable choice -- the option to choose and pay for only the channels consumers want to watch.
Topic: TV watchdog: New MTV series about teens 'dangerous' (Read 593 times)