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Posted on 02/12/2005 9:48:28 PM PST by SmithL

You might think that bad language has increased on primetime television.

But Barbara Kaye knows it for a fact.

Over the past dozen years Kaye, an associate professor in the University of Tennessee's School of Journalism and Electronic Media, and colleague Barry Sapolsky, a Florida State University professor, have chronicled the ebbs and flows of bad and profane words on primetime network television.

Their latest article, "Offensive Language in Prime Time Television: Four Years After Television Age and Content Ratings" was published in December in The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.

"Profanity increased between 1997 and 2001 to a rate of one word every eight minutes," they wrote. "Fox network programs contained more crudities than all other networks; UPN had the highest rate of such words per hour. Mild-other words such as 'hell' and 'damn' dominated, but the 'seven dirty words' were heard once every three hours."

Research on how many times someone says "damn" or worse on network television wasn't the sort of research Kaye focused on as a Florida State graduate student - until a Tallahassee television station refused to air a controversial new show in 1993.

" 'NYPD Blue' is what got me into it," Kaye said. "They were saying there was going to be all this indecent language, and I was not happy that the Tallahassee affiliate wouldn't show the program."

"I wanted to see for myself, does it really have more instances of (bad) language?"

Kaye had a friend send her tapes of the program.

"I believe we found that 'NYPD Blue' did not have significantly more instances of language than the other shows, and actually some of the sitcoms had more instances of indecent language," Kaye said."

It was the beginning of what's been a long research project.

"It's the kind of thing that deserves frequent checking to see how things (change)," Sapolsky said.

After the pair did an initial study on "NYPD Blue," they looked at tapes of primetime programming in 1990 and compared it to programming in 1994.

Eventually "we decided we would do this as a continuing work every four years," said Kaye, a co-author of three books including ones focusing on advertising on the Internet and the past, present and future of electronic media.

Both she and Sapolsky have other research interests with Kaye co-writing a number of articles on the relationship of the Internet and the media. But they have collaborated on at least five articles based on their research including a study that came out earlier this year, "Watch Your Mouth! An Analysis of Profanity Uttered by Children on Prime Time Television."

She and Sapolsky have surveyed network primetime content for 1990, 1994, 1997 (because it was the year age and content ratings debuted) and 2001.

They're gearing up now for their 2005 effort.

The pair studies primetime programming on seven networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB, UPN and PAX.

Their work has shown that bad language has risen over the years, but it hasn't rocketed up or even been a steady climb.

Instead, Kaye's and Sapolsky's work has shown that the use of bad or profane language has peaked at some points and then dropped apparently in response to viewer complaints and pressure from interest groups before rising again.

It's expected to dip again in the 2005 survey.

"1990 was less, it went up in 1994, down in '97 but only to the same levels of 1990," Kaye said in her small office filled with books, an FSU football poster and a little TiVo doll perched on one of the shelves.

"There was just a lot of attention paid to language on television at that time (1997, the year the ratings came into being). I think there was more attention being paid to it so that's why it went down, but then by 2001 "

By 2001, coarse language was up considerably.

"When all seven networks are combined, nearly nine out of 10 programs contained at least one instance of offensive language," Kaye and Sapolsky wrote, "The most commonly occurring form of cursing is 'mild-other' with 4.56 incidents per hour, predominant forms include 'Christ,' 'Jesus,' and other variants on 'God,' with other common words being 'hell' and 'damn.' "

According to a table that accompanied their December article, the frequency of offensive language in primetime on four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) went from a combined total of 384 incidents in 1990 during the survey period to 536 in 1994, 392 in 1997 and 639 in 2001.

The survey period is generally a few weeks long.

UPN, WB and PAX debuted after 1990. If you toss them into the 2001 mix the number of incidents rises to 958.

A spokesman for Fox , the network with the most incidents, said he couldn't really comment on the article because it was based on research done in 2001.

"It is not germane to what the network is doing today," said Scott Grogin, vice president for corporate communications for Fox

Grogin would not address the study, saying he didn't want to "speculate" on any kind of media research.

"Depending on how the data is generated, and the other factors that are different in every study, you are going to get different results," he said.

While the milder words tended to dominate the numbers, examples of the "seven dirty words" showed up 43 times in 2001. There were three incidents of those words in the 1990 study.

The drop in 1997 came amid a focus on what some viewers, legislators and interest groups believe was increasing indecency on television.

"That attention kind of ebbs and gets more intense at certain times, I think where there is a particular incident that gets people's attention and there is a lot of talk about, 'Well, we have to stop this,' " Kaye said. "And then once that blows over, the words tend to go by again without much notice."

The incidence of bad language, as defined by the study, rose steadily to 2001.

Kaye and Sapolsky wrote in the December article that some groups now say the increase between 1997 and 2001 was the result of the new warnings.

"They claim that because viewers are forewarned, producers actually feel freer to include more inappropriate words and actions," they wrote.

The two researchers' focus is on the amount of bad language - as well as the type and context - not analyzing the reasons for it. But they do refer to and briefly discuss other studies that do look at the potential reasons in light of their findings.

"I don't know if the ratings freed up writers and producers to do more if it was sort of the momentum" for using coarse language that was already in place, said Daniel Amundson, Research Director for The Center for Media and Public Affairs.

Amundson said much of the stronger language shows up in dramas where writers are trying to present programs mirroring reality.

No one seems to have a clear answer about whether the increasing coarseness of the language on television reflects the culture or helps drive it.

"I think, in terms of language, it's viewed as reflective," Amundson said. "It's viewed as a way to depict grittiness. It's an effort to make them appear more realistic."

The pendulum on bad language may swing back the other way this year because of incidents like the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" during last year's Super Bowl halftime show and the singer Bono uttering a profanity during the live airing of the Grammy Awards show.

The number of indecency complaints received by the Federal Communications Commission rose from 111 in 2000 to about 1.07 million in 2004, according to the commission. Some of the numbers are attributable to organized campaigns, and an FCC spokeswoman indicated that about half of the complaints stemmed from the Jackson incident.

At first, Kaye said, the FCC didn't find the Bono utterance indecent because of the context in which it was used but reversed course holding that essentially that particular word cannot be uttered on primetime network television, period.

That, and what's perceived as a harder FCC line on indecent language, contributed to the recent controversy in which some television stations declined to broadcast "Saving Private Ryan" because of fears about how the FCC might react to some of the content in the movie.

"We are at a point where no one in the broadcast industry knows how the FCC will sort things out," Amundson said. "I think that the 2004-2005 season may be a tame-looking one for language."

Both Kaye and Sapolsky speculate that the numbers will be down in this year's study but indicated that's why you do the research, to see what's really going on.

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