BCC sees red over buttocks show

2010-04-16 14:13

Cape Town - A programme showing plastic arrows being shot at boys' bare bums has earned MultiChoice a reprimand from the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.

The programme was an episode of Scar Tissue shown during family viewing time on February 7.

According to MultiChoice, Scar Tissue is a series aimed at 18 to 24-year-olds showing "various stunts performed by a professional crew across a wide spectrum of everyday situations".

One segment of the February 7 episode showed four teenage boys standing against the wall and an archer shooting plastic arrows at their bare backsides.

Another showed the four demonstrating "wedges", to the point that their underwear broke and exposed their backsides.

Adjudicator Brian Makeketa said in a ruling released on Friday that a Laura Nankervis had complained about the episode, shown on a Sunday.

Nankervis had said she found the whole episode in extremely bad taste, and Makeketa agreed.

"(I) wondered if this was a game and what type of a game it is that humiliates teenagers through pain rather than makes (sic) them feel better," he said.

He noted that MultiChoice had discontinued the programme, and reprimanded it.

SABC off the hook

The commission also on Friday dismissed a complaint about an allegedly risqué promo for the late show Swing Time, screened on SABC 3.

A Pieter Beukes had complained to the commission that the advert "caused our young children to ask difficult questions".

"Five-year-olds don't need to know about things like this," he said.

"I feel SABC must rather run these adverts later when children will not be as exposed."

The SABC said in response that the promo was aired during the broadcast of an episode of Days of Our Lives that carried a PG13 advisory.

"Parents also have to take responsibility what they expose their children to," the broadcaster said.

- SAPA