New Ofcom Rules

(02-01-2011 12:57 )Jay39 Wrote:  This forum makes me laugh at times, no matter how much banter and discussion goes on on here, as long as the channels continue to bow down to ofcom things will not change. They had an opportunity when the channels had a so called meeting with Ofcom to discuss, well be dictated to, about acceptable standards. If the channels went in and then walked out with their tails between their legs then Ofcom will have the upper hand, regardless of survey's etc or even the wishes of 44,600 members on here. As long as the channels are making revenue they will not give a toss about what we think. In respect of the day shows well I agree they needed to be railed in a little, but as for the night shows the new rules are pathetic to say the least, no consitency from Ofcom who see the babe channels as an easy target. Bring back the days of the ITC when they cost very little to the tax payer compared to the 125 million that the new Mary Whitehouse brigade cost, plus we got a lot better viewing.

But then surely the ITC was every bit as prescriptive on the FTA sector as Ofcom. If I remember, on the old forum (those were the days), everyone was looking forward to the introduction of the new regulator as it was thought that there would then be no reason why the channels should not go a lot further.

(02-01-2011 14:03 )Tonywauk Wrote:  But then surely the ITC was every bit as prescriptive on the FTA sector as Ofcom. If I remember, on the old forum (those were the days), everyone was looking forward to the introduction of the new regulator as it was thought that there would then be no reason why the channels should not go a lot further.

Ha ha ha! Isn't that rather like imagining a new government will change everything in the land and make it all better?
We Humans are such an idiotic race.
Condemned to go round and round in circles forever.....

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

(02-01-2011 00:22 )Krill Liberator Wrote:  Aaanyway, I came on here simply to post that I'd recently been witness to some full-frontal female nudity in the show "Above Suspicion" on ITV3 this evening.

I know. Shocker...
...
The context was that the main character had entered a house owned by a disabled ex-cop (played by ex-Corrie favourite John "Ah Sayyy" Savident) to interview him, but was instead confronted by the reality that the house was routinely used for the shooting of adult movies. The nude actress had wandered, bitching but untroubled by the detective's presence, onto the scene to whine about some minor detail or other, before being fobbed off by the second female.

The exposure was full body, full-length, full-frontal with both nipple and modest labial exposure. Exposure lasted for approximately 5 seconds plus.
The scene was screened before 10pm
...

Krill, the unedited version of your post is very interesting and well presented.

My sense as to why a regulator would allow the footage you describe is that it could help instill in the viewer the actual feeling the character entering the house would experience. In other words, if the viewer doesn't see the 'explicit' vision, he or she is less able to get inside the main character's mind at that point - experience the same shock, or whatever. There could also be a 'characterisation' argument - that the nude female is characterised by her approach to nudity. If she's wearing a g-string maybe it doesn't convey her unfettered or perhaps slightly exhibitionist nature sufficiently to the viewer. I didn't see the programme so I don't know how crucial to the plot these factors would be, but I can imagine the programme maker using something similar to the above as a defence, and a regulator accepting it - particularly since the view was brief.

I feel that in assessing a defence, a regulator is really just saying to itself: "Can we get away with telling the public this material was justified?" The 'wider public' wants justification for everything. Nothing can just happen - it has to be explained. It's a pain, but again, it's just the culture. And if the best explanation a channel can give is: "We showed this in order to get viewers off", the public sympathy isn't gonna be there. On this forum it seems like a perfectly good explanation (which it is), but for generations people have been brought up to reject it, and Ofcom will inevitably take that into account.

I think, KL, that a certain section of the community would find what you saw just as offensive as they'd find the same level of explicitness on a babeshow, but the problem the babeshows have is that, even context aside, they can't defend themselves as confidently as ITV can with a drama. The babe channels probably don't have anything like the same legal resources as ITV, and since they have no variety of content, they can't simply replace their output with something else if a Mary Whitehouse wannabe mobilises a serious campaign against them. If someone rules that ITV can't screen any more dramas with nudity, they'll barely bat an eyelid. But if someone rules that a babe channel can't screen any more babeshows with nudity, it's beyond a crisis. Hence, I believe, the babeshows' much greater caution with sexual content than a mainstream channel.

There are people dotted around the country who literally have nothing better to do than get insulted and offended by things they don't even need to be watching. I actually know a couple of people like that. Take a look at Newswatch on a Friday evening (BBC News channel) and you'll see what a petty lot of moaning gripers some members of the public can be (he moaned ). Many of them don't complain because something matters to them - they complain because they like complaining and have nothing more pressing to complain about. They can get offended by the fact that a sports presenter isn't wearing a tie! It's ridiculous, but it's a reality, and a TV channel has to budget for people so obsessed with making complaints. I suppose serial complainants are a bit like burglars, in that if a show looks well defended they'll go elsewhere and pick on an easier target. In complying with Ofcom rules the babe channels make themselves more secure and better protected in the event a large number of complaints was to arise.

Incidentally, the nature of mass complaint scenarios is that they often start very small, with just a trickle of disgruntled viewers who may have fairly extreme views or a strong vested interest in complaining. But this can snowball into thousands of complaints from people who are 'offended by proxy' after hearing or reading about any initial complaints in the news. So only a few people would have to start taking serious issue with the babeshows for a potentially very big problem to arise. I do see this issue from both sides, and I see the same vision of double standards other forum members see. But the caution shown by the babeshows is in my view vital, and without it I don't think things would be as far advanced as they are. They're businesses making lots of money with things just as they stand. Fighting for the right to screen more explicit content probably doesn't matter to them very much at all now they've got nude or topless girls on screen (which I and I'm sure others never cease to find sufficiently captivating as the 'shop window'). But risking their own livelihood, and that of their employees (by mounting sweeping, uncharted challenges to the status quo) does matter to them, and if they've got an ounce of sense they'll never do it.

A lot of the above doesn't specifically relate to Krill's post - just the tide of the thread in general. But if I could just ask KL, what were her tits like, and where can I find the caps?

They were pert. Ever so pert. And a little pointy, yet still fulsome... I'll stop before I start getting carried away there!

Thank you, Light Entertainment, for another very well-considered and eminently readable response. I'm in full agreement with everything you've said above.
It's a sad but well-known truth that the professional complainers create trouble and discord out of a lack of much else to do - they are the germs of society, spreading social colds that sap our freedom and joy on an irregular but annoyingly all-too-frequent basis. It would be better if they all learned to appreciate this wonderful world and ceased their self-important ways, having understood that the world doesn't owe them the duty of keeping them and them only satisfied and 'unoffended'.
The commas are an indication that I don't believe that these folk are necessarily always upset but that, as you've suggested, they're rather like sharks in that they will bite if they sense blood or weakness.
Sadly, as you say, niche programming is horrendously vulnerable to such attacks as an entire channel's raison d'etre then comes under fire. Thus, caution is to be expected.
I think that a large number of us held Bang Media largely accountable for two things:
1) The undoing of their operation.
2) The new Ofcom rules.
In fact, we can be in hardly any doubt of it.
I suspect that, in time, we'll all come to respect the so-slated "tame shows" for keeping the 900's alive and broadcasting.

But the ironic juxtaposition of the public's perception of the adult industry (and how it can be/is depicted in television drama) and the sad reality of what The Industry is actually allowed to do on tv really does irk me, to a considerable degree.

I think we all tacitly accept that our wishes are seldom going to be in line with the reality of the babeshows, but my (slightly ironic) post was intended more than anything to provoke. Hopefully, to provoke other forum members into joining in doing what Eccles has been diligently doing for some time now - logging the inconsistencies and highlighting the inequalities that exist in the realm of broadcasting regulations, so that some kind of back catalogue, a kind of case-law, exists for concerned parties to use as ammunition against the disinterested, the uncaring, the useless and the misguided who find themselves busy censoring what amounts to harmless fun, for the sake of appeasing those malcontents who continually raise their phoney objections to anything that might allow a slice of the populace to otherwise have some legitimate fun.

And who knows, maybe one day we'll be thanking the regulators for finally allowing us what we want, and the shows will meet our expectations?
And perhaps I'll learn to construct shorter sentences.

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

Two fantastic posts there.

(02-01-2011 14:45 )Krill Liberator Wrote:  

(02-01-2011 14:03 )Tonywauk Wrote:  But then surely the ITC was every bit as prescriptive on the FTA sector as Ofcom. If I remember, on the old forum (those were the days), everyone was looking forward to the introduction of the new regulator as it was thought that there would then be no reason why the channels should not go a lot further.

Ha ha ha! Isn't that rather like imagining a new government will change everything in the land and make it all better?
We Humans are such an idiotic race.
Condemned to go round and round in circles forever.....

The rather odd thing about the rules for so-called Adult TV a few years back was that they seem even more confused and inconsistent than they are now. I can't remember whether it was under the ITC or Ofcom that all those pin-protected, PPV hardcore shows went on for months, if not a year or more, on a number of stations while TVX and The Adult Channel were, for the most part, limited to the same softcore rubbish they pump out today. Ridiculous that you could see a live show featuring e.g. Nathalie Heck pleasuring herself with a giant dildo while eating out one of the other 'presenters', but TVX could not show any such thing in its programme of pre-recorded material.

(02-01-2011 21:13 )Tonywauk Wrote:  

(02-01-2011 14:45 )Krill Liberator Wrote:  

(02-01-2011 14:03 )Tonywauk Wrote:  But then surely the ITC was every bit as prescriptive on the FTA sector as Ofcom. If I remember, on the old forum (those were the days), everyone was looking forward to the introduction of the new regulator as it was thought that there would then be no reason why the channels should not go a lot further.

Ha ha ha! Isn't that rather like imagining a new government will change everything in the land and make it all better?
We Humans are such an idiotic race.
Condemned to go round and round in circles forever.....

The rather odd thing about the rules for so-called Adult TV a few years back was that they seem even more confused and inconsistent than they are now. I can't remember whether it was under the ITC or Ofcom that all those pin-protected, PPV hardcore shows went on for months, if not a year or more, on a number of stations while TVX and The Adult Channel were, for the most part, limited to the same softcore rubbish they pump out today. Ridiculous that you could see a live show featuring e.g. Nathalie Heck pleasuring herself with a giant dildo while eating out one of the other 'presenters', but TVX could not show any such thing in its programme of pre-recorded material.

Tell me about it. As a TVX subscriber a fair while back, I can recall watching and thinking "just pan across a bit - FFS!", all the while avidly waiting for the occasional flash of hardcore to 'slip' through the editing process.... amazing that it could even happen but still, as you suggest, not nearly good enough when you're paying to see an encrypted channel.

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

I suppose this is one of the disadvantages of being an "island race". Mainland Europe has, for years, been comfortable with full sex on TV and gives the responsibility for ensuring their children don't watch anything unsuitable to the parents.
In the UK, Ofcon say they cannot trust UK parents so have to do the work for them.

(02-01-2011 19:29 )Light Entertainment Wrote:  

(02-01-2011 00:22 )Krill Liberator Wrote:  Aaanyway, I came on here simply to post that I'd recently been witness to some full-frontal female nudity in the show "Above Suspicion" on ITV3 this evening.

I know. Shocker...
...
The context was that the main character had entered a house owned by a disabled ex-cop (played by ex-Corrie favourite John "Ah Sayyy" Savident) to interview him, but was instead confronted by the reality that the house was routinely used for the shooting of adult movies. The nude actress had wandered, bitching but untroubled by the detective's presence, onto the scene to whine about some minor detail or other, before being fobbed off by the second female.

The exposure was full body, full-length, full-frontal with both nipple and modest labial exposure. Exposure lasted for approximately 5 seconds plus.
The scene was screened before 10pm
...

Krill, the unedited version of your post is very interesting and well presented.

My sense as to why a regulator would allow the footage you describe is that it could help instill in the viewer the actual feeling the character entering the house would experience. In other words, if the viewer doesn't see the 'explicit' vision, he or she is less able to get inside the main character's mind at that point - experience the same shock, or whatever. There could also be a 'characterisation' argument - that the nude female is characterised by her approach to nudity. If she's wearing a g-string maybe it doesn't convey her unfettered or perhaps slightly exhibitionist nature sufficiently to the viewer. I didn't see the programme so I don't know how crucial to the plot these factors would be, but I can imagine the programme maker using something similar to the above as a defence, and a regulator accepting it - particularly since the view was brief.

I feel that in assessing a defence, a regulator is really just saying to itself: "Can we get away with telling the public this material was justified?" The 'wider public' wants justification for everything. Nothing can just happen - it has to be explained. It's a pain, but again, it's just the culture. And if the best explanation a channel can give is: "We showed this in order to get viewers off", the public sympathy isn't gonna be there. On this forum it seems like a perfectly good explanation (which it is), but for generations people have been brought up to reject it, and Ofcom will inevitably take that into account.

I think, KL, that a certain section of the community would find what you saw just as offensive as they'd find the same level of explicitness on a babeshow, but the problem the babeshows have is that, even context aside, they can't defend themselves as confidently as ITV can with a drama. The babe channels probably don't have anything like the same legal resources as ITV, and since they have no variety of content, they can't simply replace their output with something else if a Mary Whitehouse wannabe mobilises a serious campaign against them. If someone rules that ITV can't screen any more dramas with nudity, they'll barely bat an eyelid. But if someone rules that a babe channel can't screen any more babeshows with nudity, it's beyond a crisis. Hence, I believe, the babeshows' much greater caution with sexual content than a mainstream channel.

There are people dotted around the country who literally have nothing better to do than get insulted and offended by things they don't even need to be watching. I actually know a couple of people like that. Take a look at Newswatch on a Friday evening (BBC News channel) and you'll see what a petty lot of moaning gripers some members of the public can be (he moaned ). Many of them don't complain because something matters to them - they complain because they like complaining and have nothing more pressing to complain about. They can get offended by the fact that a sports presenter isn't wearing a tie! It's ridiculous, but it's a reality, and a TV channel has to budget for people so obsessed with making complaints. I suppose serial complainants are a bit like burglars, in that if a show looks well defended they'll go elsewhere and pick on an easier target. In complying with Ofcom rules the babe channels make themselves more secure and better protected in the event a large number of complaints was to arise.

Incidentally, the nature of mass complaint scenarios is that they often start very small, with just a trickle of disgruntled viewers who may have fairly extreme views or a strong vested interest in complaining. But this can snowball into thousands of complaints from people who are 'offended by proxy' after hearing or reading about any initial complaints in the news. So only a few people would have to start taking serious issue with the babeshows for a potentially very big problem to arise. I do see this issue from both sides, and I see the same vision of double standards other forum members see. But the caution shown by the babeshows is in my view vital, and without it I don't think things would be as far advanced as they are. They're businesses making lots of money with things just as they stand. Fighting for the right to screen more explicit content probably doesn't matter to them very much at all now they've got nude or topless girls on screen (which I and I'm sure others never cease to find sufficiently captivating as the 'shop window'). But risking their own livelihood, and that of their employees (by mounting sweeping, uncharted challenges to the status quo) does matter to them, and if they've got an ounce of sense they'll never do it.

A lot of the above doesn't specifically relate to Krill's post - just the tide of the thread in general. But if I could just ask KL, what were her tits like, and where can I find the caps?

But risking their own livelihood, and that of their employees (by mounting sweeping, uncharted challenges to the status quo) does matter to them, and if they've got an ounce of sense they'll never do it.

Who are you trying to kid mate,these twats risk fuck all.they know what we want to see but hold short of showing it ,because we put up with what there is.Full fucking stop.
Fuck them,stop phoning ,stop watching and let them eat shit,they have had more than enough time to challenge the cunts at Ofcom,but as long as us silly bastards keep to what we do and carry on sponsoring them,then they will still pretend to be under the whip.
Money is money and these pretentiouse bastards are making it hand over fist with the likes of us.
Sorry but I`ve had a good drink tonight and had to get that off my chest.
Happy New Year to all

(01-01-2011 19:43 )mrmann Wrote:  

(01-01-2011 18:52 )Light Entertainment Wrote:  Gazfc, the pic you posted raises thought in the kind of direction I feel this discussion could do with heading...

[i][SNIP]/i]

I agree with the not showing full nudity because it's showing all for nothing, which is why they should figure out how to charge for this. Encryption doesn't seem to be happening, so this probably won't happen.

As for context (Hate this word ), well if the shows were encrypted, then there would be no need for context, as it would be only available to those who know the pin code, but that won't happen because not as many people have SKY, and Ofcom will lose their power over the channels.

But back to context again. Why does this have to come into play on adult channels that are their to stimulate? When they are allowed to show and do almost everything, covering their private parts gives off the impression that it's something so dirty and horrible that nobody is allowed to see. It makes no sense on Ofcom's behalf, and the only reason why not showing everything makes any sense at all, is because they aren't making enough money to do so. Also, not all of the women would be happy to show everything, but many ARE, and would if allowed.

I still think that many members of Ofcom find vaginas to be frightening Even on the other shows I've mentioned, it's rare to see an uncensored open leg vagina shot, yet penises are always uncensored. Why is that? Maybe they've seen Alien too many times, and vaginas remind them of facehuggers?

In the recent posts by Eccles, Ofcom says that genitals can be shown, as long as they aren't aroused. Um, OK.

This topic is getting a bit tiring to be honest.

If you agree with not showing full nudity,why bother watching these channels at all.
Don`t go telling me now that you don`t click onto the pussy slips..nipple slipa etc..`cause I wouldn`t believe you