At the end of last year ITV began a new
series, Jekyll and Hyde, which was
broadcast at 6.30pm on Saturday evenings and aimed at a whole family audience.
The series creator warned that his
programme would be ‘scary’ but few who tuned in expected to such gratuitously
violent material so early in the evening.
One character was bludgeoned to death within the first minute and it was
followed by further violent deaths including someone being set on fire and
another being shot in the stomach. Ironically,
anyone wishing to access the programme on ITV’s catch-up service had to confirm
that they were over 18 in order to access the show.
Following transmission Ofcom received more
than 500 complaints, including one from Mediawatch-UK. We said that ITV’s transmission of Jekyll And
Hyde a full two-and-a-half hours before the watershed was deeply irresponsible.
The show’s writer says TV had to become
more extreme to keep up with the proliferation of graphic content online. Responding to questions before transmission
he said: “Some of the parents might get a little upset and some of the smaller
kids, but, you know, f*** them.”
Following an investigation Ofcom ruled that
ITV broke UK
broadcasting rules for airing “violent and frightening” material early in the
evening when children were watching.
The regulator “found this programme broke
our rules requiring children to be protected from unsuitable material by
appropriate scheduling…the cumulative effect of viol
ITV, which had argued that the violence was
“limited and fantastical” and had refused to move the show to a later slot said
that it had “taken this decision on board for future programming.”
Ofcom’s decision is most welcome. Broadcasters appear to be increasingly
tempted to break boundaries in a bid to grab the attention of an increasingly
fragmented audience and so strong regulation is vital. Although we have taken issue with many of
Ofcom’s decisions in the past, on this occasion the regulator did what it
describes as one of its ‘most important duties’; protecting children from
harmful material on television.