"Much of today's family-hour sexual content deals with topics, such as oral sex and pornography, which a decade or so ago were rarely touched on even in 10 p.m. shows, let alone 8 p.m. fare," reads the report's executive summary, released Wednesday (Aug. 1).
The Los Angeles-based organization works to encourage entertainment industry leaders to provide "positive, family-oriented television programming."
Its findings were based on the examination of six weeks of family-hour shows from the 2000-01 television season and compared them to a previous study from the 1998-99 season.
Although the amount of sexual material decreased by 17 percent to a per-hour average of 3.1 instances, the council found the material often was more raunchy.
The organization also found that coarse language and violence increased, prompting a jump of 24 percent in the overall rate of offensive content.
The council cited UPN as the most offensive, with a combined per-hour average of 18.1 instances. NBC was in second place with 9.1 instances, followed by Fox (7.8), WB (7.5), ABC (6.7) and CBS (3.2).
