Corus Entertainment’s plans to include Scream, a horror channel, on its slate of new digi-channels set to launch this September, has re-awakened calls for vigilance over television violence.

The calls are coming from Valerie Smith, a ‘concerned citizen’ who says she has volunteered on anti-violence campaigns with various organizations – including the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Coalition for Responsible Television – over the past dozen years.

Smith has written Corus CEO John Cassaday a lengthy, multifaceted letter dated June 25 outlining her concerns about the types of programming, especially ‘slasher movies,’ which she worries are destined for Scream and a teen audience.

Lori Rosenberg, vice-president and general manager of Scream, says the channel will be promoted as an adult service with an 18-49 demographic.

Although Scream’s press material says it will feature old fashioned slasher films, Rosenberg explains that, ‘The use of the term slasher as Valerie Smith defines it – as in sexual torture – … is not what would appear on Scream.’

She adds the idea for a horror channel was a response to audience interest in the genre, noting that, as a member of the non-profit consortium Concerned Children’s Advertisers, Corus will respect all of Canada’s anti-violence codes, including the CAB Violence Code, which came into effect in 1994. In addition, she says Corus will follow appropriate scheduling practices and air warnings, and parents can use V-Chip monitoring.

According to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council website, the CAB code (much like one later adopted by pay and specialty channels) ‘contains an absolute ban on the broadcasting of gratuitous or glamorized violence. ‘Gratuitous’ is defined as ‘material which does not play an integral role in developing the plot, character or theme of the material as a whole.’ ‘

The code also spells out rules for shows aimed at child audiences, and ‘establishes a ‘watershed’ hour of 9 p.m., before which no programming containing ‘scenes of violence intended for adult audiences’ may be telecast. The prohibition extends to promotional material and advertisements (including commercials for theatrical films) containing ‘scenes of violence intended for adult audiences’.’

Rosenberg says about 75% of Scream’s schedule will be movies. The service will be distributed on a single feed, not tape-delayed across time zones.

Smith contends programs planned for Scream, such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Prom Night, are an affront to the numerous conclusions published on the subject of TV violence and its affect on children and youth.

In an interview, she says: ‘If anybody thinks that adults will be watching this, if they’re looking for any kind of comfort in that notion… they’re not understanding the situation.’ Slasher movies, she says, are ‘a very dangerous melding of sex, slaughter and violence, and torture and suffering. There’s just no way they should have [such] a channel.’

But Cathy Loblaw, president of Concerned Children’s Advertisers – a consortium of 26 Canadian advertising companies and such broadcasters as Corus-owned YTV – says while it’s important to continually monitor violence in the media, the broadcasting industry has invoked many protective measures against excessive violence on TV since the Hincks conference. Loblaw believes these codes and guidelines are most effective when combined with media literacy instruction for young people. ‘Scream will be recognizing all those codes. I don’t think they’ll be able to achieve those things [sexual violence, glamorized violence] that Val is concerned about.’ *

-www.corusentertainment.ca

-www.cbsc.ca

-www.cca-kids.ca