Media Release

Real Sex Episode Did Not Breach Scheduling Requirements, Says Canadian Broadcast Standards Council

Ottawa, March 10, 2004 -The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released its decision concerning the broadcast of an episode of the documentary magazine series Real Sex by the specialty service Showcase Television, which was broadcast as the Vancouver feed of the Showcase signal at 4:45 am but was received in Winnipeg between 6:45-7:45 am on a Saturday morning.  A viewer complained that the content was too sexually explicit to be aired outside the Watershed hours in her time zone. Recognizing the exception to the customary Watershed provision for broadcasts which respect the 9:00 pm to 6:00 am requirement in the time zone in which the signal originates, the National Specialty Services Panel found no breach of Clause 10 (Scheduling) of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) Code of Ethics. 

As the show’s title suggests, the series has a sexual theme and the episode of that date included explicit sexual content. The show had an 18+ classification icon at the beginning and was preceded by two viewer advisories in oral and visual form, one before and one following the opening credits. The broadcast also included viewer advisories coming out of each commercial break.

In its decision, the Panel noted that the documentary magazine series Real Sex was broadcast Monday through Thursday from 4:45 to 5:45 am by Showcase, which provides two feeds to the country, one based on Toronto time and the other based on Vancouver time.  Both signals are uploaded to satellite from their operations centre in Toronto and then downloaded by cable companies, which select the appropriate signal for their time zone.  The series Real Sex, together with all other Showcase programming, was uploaded to satellite in order to be available at the same hour in the Pacific time zone as it had been in the Eastern time zone.  In the matter at hand, the complainant, being from neither of those time zones, had seen the program on August 8, 2003 between 6:45-7:45 am in Winnipeg, without being aware of the fact that the complainant’s cable operator was supplying its subscribers with the Vancouver signal (which is two hours behind Winnipeg’s Central Time zone).

In considering the complaint, the Panel explained that the time of broadcast was the cable operator’s decision, not the broadcaster’s; it added the following:

It should also be noted that the fact that the physical signal originated in Toronto does not render the exception that “these guidelines shall be applied to the time zone in which the signal originates” inoperative.  When the codifiers laid down the principle of the time zone in which the signal originates, the Panel understands that they intended to say that the issue was where the signal was intended to appear to be originating.  While the Violence Code (where this principle was first introduced) was presented to the public in a different technological era, in October 1993, its intention was even then related to time and not to geography.  The Specialty Services Panel is applying it on this basis (whether with respect to the Violence Code exception or that in the CAB Code of Ethics) and expects that any other CBSC Panels called upon to deal with this issue will do so in the same way.

 Canada’s private broadcasters have themselves created industry standards in the form of Codes on ethics, gender portrayal and television violence by which they expect the members of their profession will abide.  In 1990, they also created the CBSC, which is the self-regulatory body with the responsibility of administering those professional broadcast Codes, as well as the Code dealing with journalistic practices first created by the Radio Television News Directors Association of Canada (RTNDA) in 1970.  More than 530 radio and television stations and specialty services from across Canada are members of the Council.

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All CBSC decisions, Codes, links to members' and other web sites, and related information are available on the CBSC's website at www.cbsc.ca. For more information, please contact the CBSC National Chair, Mme Andrée Noël: anoel@cbsc.ca or CBSC Executive Director, John MacNab: jmacnab@cbsc.ca.