Comcast Continues To Bleed Olympics Viewers After Years Of Bumbling

from the you're-not-doing-a-good-job dept

NBC (now Comcast NBC Universal) has enjoyed the rights to broadcast the US Olympics since 1998. In 2011, the company paid $4.4 billion for exclusive US broadcast rights to air the Olympics through 2020. In 2014, Comcast NBC Universal shelled out another $7.75 billion for the rights to broadcast the summer and winter Olympics in the US... until the year 2032.

Despite years of experience Comcast/NBC still struggles to provide users what they actually want. For years the cable, broadband, and broadcast giant has been criticized for refusing to air events live, spoiling some events, implementing annoying cable paywall restrictions, implementing heavy handed and generally terrible advertising, often sensationalizing coverage, avoiding controversial subjects during broadcasts, and streaming efforts that range from clumsy to scattershot.

Not too surprisingly, years of this continues to have a profound drag on viewer numbers, which are worse than ever:

"Through Tuesday, an average of 12.2 million people watched the Olympics in prime-time on NBC, cable or the Peacock streaming service, down 42 percent from the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. The average for NBC alone was 10 million, a 47 percent drop, the Nielsen company said."

And this was with Comcast/NBC's attempt to goose ratings by jumping right to Olympics coverage before the Super Bowl postgame celebrations had barely started. This year's ratings were also impacted by doping scandals, COVID, an Olympics location that barely had any snow, and disgust at the host country's human rights abuses:

"One woman on Twitter proclaimed the Olympics were “over for me. My lasting impression will be fake snow against a backdrop of 87 nuclear reactors in a country with a despicable human rights record during a pandemic. And kids who can look forward to years of therapy.”

While the Olympic veneer might not be what it used to be, you still have to think Comcast could boost viewership by exploiting the internet to broaden and improve coverage and provide more real-time live coverage of all events, while bundling it in a more coherent overall presentation. After all, they've only had two decades to perfect the formula.

Filed Under: olympics, ratings
Companies: comcast, nbc

Comcast/NBC Caught Intentionally Misspelling Show Names To Help Hide Sagging Nielsen Ratings

from the obvious-integrity dept

The cable and broadcast industry goes to some amusing lengths to downplay cord cutting and streaming competition's impact on ratings and subscriber totals. Initially the impulse was just to insist that cord cutting wasn't real. When the data made outright denial impossible, the industry began insisting cord cutting was only something done by irrelevant nobodies living in mom's basement or Millennials who would see the error of their ways once they procreated. Of course data repeatedly showed that these people were the norm, and now we're looking at potentially one of the biggest quarterly subscriber losses in television history.

As ratings have reflected the industry's dying cash cow, they've also taken consistent aim at viewership measurement systems as well. A bone of particular contention has been Nielsen, which is stuck between trying to accurately measure the damage and cater to myopic cable and broadcast clients that can't hear well with their heads buried firmly in the sand. A few years ago, Nielsen was forced to stop publicizing the rise in broadband-only (not TV) households. More recently, ESPN tried to publicly shame Nielsen when the company accurately highlighted the massive subscriber exodus happening at the channel.

But the cable and broadcast industry has been engaged in some other notable shenanigans to try and protect the illusion that everything is going swimmingly. The Wall Street Journal indicates that the industry has increasingly been going so far as to intentionally misspell their programs in program listings. Why? Because when they know a show is going to see a ratings dip, listing it under another name prevents its core listing from being impacted in the Nielsen ratings:

"That explains the appearance of "NBC Nitely News," which apparently aired on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend this year, when a lot of people were away from their TVs. The retitling of “NBC Nightly News” fooled Nielsen’s automated system, which listed “Nitely” as a separate show. Hiding the May 26 program from Nielsen dramatically improved the show’s average viewership that week," the report adds. "Instead of falling further behind first-place rival 'ABC World News Tonight,' NBC news narrowed the gap."

The Journal goes on to note how this has been a sort of "open secret" in the industry for several years, but as cord cutting has begun to accelerate, its use has increased. At one point, NBC intentionally misspelled "NBC Nitely News" every night for a week. And all of this appears to be happening with the blessing of Nielsen, which again tries to walk a tightrope between being taken seriously as a rating metric system and keeping paying cable and broadcast clients happy with manufactured tales from fantasy land.

For its part, NBC issued a statement that features a number of words, but at no point addresses the issue at hand:

"As is standard industry practice, our broadcast is retitled when there are pre-emptions and inconsistencies or irregularities in the schedule, which can include holiday weekends and special sporting events,” a show spokesman said."

Granted that sounds so much nicer than "we intentionally misspell our own programs to try and pretend our industry isn't facing a massive revolution we're ill-prepared for."

Filed Under: news, nitely news, ratings
Companies: comcast, nbc, nielsen

Baltimore Ravens Owner Has Ingenious Solution For NFL Ratings Drop: Stop Annoying Fans With Too Many Ads

from the evolve-or-pay-the-price dept

For a long time, the narrative du jour in cable and broadcast circles was that sports would save cable TV from the unholy threat of cord cutting and the associated ratings drop. Live sports and sports analysis was, the argument usually went, the one true piece of bedrock in the cable and broadcast empire that could protect the industry from sagging ratings and defecting customers. But as we've see by the NFL's 2016 ratings dip and ESPN's stumbling face-plant, sports simply isn't the panacea industry executives pretended it was. Of course, the industry likes to attack any messenger that points this out, but it doesn't make the underlying reality any less true.

With sports ratings in decline, the obvious question then becomes what to do about it. Most of the proposals being circulated by the industry have been relatively comical, like the NFL's decision earlier this year to simply shuffle the Titanic deck chairs a little and consider the subject closed:

"According to people familiar with the plan, the one-week test will reduce the number of commercial breaks from the standard five per quarter to four, while retaining the usual spot load. In other words, while football fans will have fewer opportunities to make kitchen runs and bathroom breaks, the ad pods that do air will eat up more clock."

So the industry's ingenious solution to complaints that there are too many ads? Keep the same overall ad load, but just shuffle the delivery up a little bit. That's kind of on par with the ingenious solutions the cable and broadcast industry has been using for years. When they're not responding to consumer annoyance by just increasing ad load, they've focused on editing or speeding up shows to fit in more ads. Obviously none of this is going to address the fact that streaming video has changed the entire game, and traditional television has to adapt or perish, even if this means initially losing revenue.

Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti this week had a novel idea; how about the NFL stop shoving so many ads down the gullets of already frustrated users, most of whom pay an arm and a leg for cable?

"It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that nobody wants to see two minutes of commercials, come back, kick the ball and then go to a minute-and-a-half of commercials,” Bisciotti said Tuesday. “I’ve thought that was absurd since I was 20 years old."

You mean, fining teams for sharing video clips isn't going to fix things? Bisciotti goes on to note that yes, this will certainly result in a drop in initial revenue, but hey -- it won't hurt billionaire owners any, really:

“We’ve got to figure that out,” Bisciotti said. “Again, if you change that, it could mean a reduction in income, but that’s going to hit the players more significantly than it’s going to hit the owners. I still don’t know any owner that’s in this business because of the money.

“Everything is on the table, and if we have to go to ABC and NBC and say that we’ve got to cut some commercials out and give some money back and half of that money doesn’t go into the player pool, maybe that’s what we’re going to have to do. But our expenses would be adjusted accordingly too. So, I’d like to see some things cleaned up.”

What a novel idea. Actually changing your behavior instead of crucifying anybody that suggests you should adapt? Examining aggressive and creative solutions to the ongoing ratings and cord cutting slide, instead of burying your head deeply in the sand? Traditional cable providers and broadcasters are going to lose money in the face of increased competition and more consumer choice. The question then becomes, do these companies want to have at least some kind of direct control over this trajectory and evolution of their industry, or are they just going to do nothing, and stand there with dumb looks on their faces as customers flock to less expensive, more flexible, and ultimately less annoying entertainment alternatives?

Filed Under: ads, football, ratings, steve bisciotti, tv
Companies: nfl

Despite ESPN Whining, Nielsen Confirms Historic Subscriber Losses For Channel

from the not-just-a-river-in-Egypt dept

Last week, we noted how Disney and ESPN threw a bit of a hissy fit when Nielsen data indicated that ESPN had one of the biggest subscriber losses in company history last month. According to Nielsen's data, ESPN lost 621,000 homes in a single month, as well as losing 607,000 ESPN2 households and 674,000 ESPNU homes. That's of course on the heels of losing more than 7 million subscribers over the last three years or so, thanks largely due to the rise of cord cutting, cord trimming (scaling down your TV package) and the rise of some "skinny bundles" that exclude ESPN from the base channel lineup.

ESPN demanded that Nielsen withdraw its numbers, insisting they represented a "dramatic, unexplainable variation" that didn't match ESPN's own numbers. Nielsen obliged, but after conducting an "extensive" review of the numbers found them to be "accurate as originally released." Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise; we've noted how everybody but ESPN appears to have seen the writing on the wall. But instead of adapting to the changing times, ESPN responded by denying that cord cutting was real, and suing companies like Verizon for trying to bring some flexibility to the traditional cable bundle.

Not too surprisingly, ESPN's response in light of Nielsen confirming its numbers was to continue denying the very obvious fact that customers are tired of paying an arm and a leg for sports programming many of them simply don't watch. From an ESPN statement given to the media:

"This most recent snapshot from Nielsen is a historic anomaly for the industry and inconsistent with much more moderated trends observed by other respected third party analysts. It also does not measure DMVPDs and other new distributors and we hope to work with Nielsen to capture this growing market in future reports."

Except it's not an "anomaly" at all if you've been watching ESPN's subscriber base drop 2-4% per year right alongside dips in other broadcast ratings. Even sports, long believed to be the untouchable holy grail of television programming, has been suffering a notable decline as younger viewers look for cheaper, more flexible alternatives to the bloated cable bundle. ESPN's response to these challenges? Either outright denial or incorrect claims by company executive John Skinner that these departing customers are old, poor, and not worth keeping anyway.

ESPN is the biggest beneficiary of the old method of bloated, overpriced channel bundles, but like so many broadcast and cable companies, it's too terrified of prematurely harming the existing cable TV cash cow to try anything truly innovative. As a result, the company is seeing historic losses in subscribers, with apparently everybody but ESPN seeing that this adaptation (like a standalone streaming service) will need to come sooner rather than later.

Filed Under: cord cutting, espn, ratings, subscribers
Companies: disney, espn, nielsen

Comcast/NBC Tone Deafness, Not 'Millennials' To Blame For Olympics Ratings Drop

from the we'll-adapt-when-we-damn-well-feel-like-it dept

Olympics watchers repeatedly begged Comcast for live opening ceremonies, more live events, less host prattle, and fewer ads ahead of the recent games in Rio. What did Comcast deliver instead? A smorgasbord of abysmal bloviation, tape delays, and so many advertisements that many people stopped watching in disgust. As a result, the Rio Olympics were the lowest rated Summer Olympics since 2000, with average viewership down 17% and an overall audience that was 25% smaller than 2012 in the 18-to-49 demo.

We've already noted how a big reason was Comcast/NBC's absolute refusal to actually listen to paying customers and heed lessons from the cord cutting era. But a Bloomberg headline this week proudly crowed that Millennials were somehow to blame for the slide. Amusingly, the piece cites a comment from NBC exec Steve Burke, who last June described a scenario he said would be a "nightmare":

"We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it."

That is, so we're clear, an NBC exec predicting that if NBC's Olympics ratings dropped, it would be the fault of Millennials living in a bubble -- not possibly due to anything NBC did. And with ratings dropping from 17 to 25%, Burke's nightmare scenario effectively came true. NBC is quick to point out that streaming was actually up, but that wasn't able to help an overall dive in ratings. And while Comcast/NBC is quick to insist it's adapting to consumer demand, people young and old found Olympic streaming to be an annoying and cumbersome experience littered with paywalls, delays, authentication issues, and other headaches:

"I’m sure NBC were patting themselves on the backs for how easy it would be to watch online this year, but that’s only true for cable subscribers, a slowly shrinking percentage of the US population, especially for Millennials. The reason NBC is losing Millennials to other platforms for entertainment is because all of those platforms have lowered the barriers to enjoy the programming. I can sign up for Hulu, Netflix, and HBO nearly in an instant. Oh, and did I mention they’re all ad free (with a premium on Hulu)?

Had NBC offered the entire Olympic Platform for a small fee (less than $10), they probably would have seen their Millennial numbers skyrocket. Hell, they could have charged $5 more for an “Ad Free” presentation and padded their pockets even more. But instead, they relied on the old dying models of traditional broadcast network and revenue models of years past, and it bit them in the ass.

Why is streaming so clunky and difficult? Because most cable industry streaming efforts are designed to give the illusion of innovation, flexibility and adaptation, without actually providing any of these. Why? Because offering a truly easy, inexpensive online streaming service (Olympics or otherwise) would cannibalize the traditional cable TV cash cow. As such, easy, flexible and inexpensive streaming remains an intentional afterthought, and will until cord cutting finally reaches critical mass. In short, like so many legacy industries, pay TV won't truly adapt until the house is fully engulfed in flames.

Filed Under: coverage, millenials, olympics, ratings, time delay
Companies: nbc universal

Australia Ratings Board Bans Hotline Miami 2; Developers Tell Australians To 'Just Pirate It'

from the BUT-WE-SAID-YOU-CAN'T-HAVE-IT! dept

In 2013, Australia boldly moved into the 20th century by finally allowing games targeted at gamers above the age of 15 (which still makes up a majority of gamers, despite the birth rate and the rise of mobile gaming) to reach their intended audience. Even with the new rating (15+), game developers still found themselves altering games to avoid the government's infantilizing banhammer.

The developers behind Hotline Miami 2 (Devolver Digital), the sequel to the Drive-inspired, synth-drenched, retro ode to twin-stick, top-down ultraviolence, is the latest to have a game banned in a country that loves banning creative works. Of course, the Australian ratings board doesn't call it a "ban." It simply refused classification, which is basically the same thing, only using bigger words.

The ratings board doesn't have a problem with the standard grade violence contained in Hotline Miami 2, but it does find the following (taken from the ratings board's report) to be a bit more than even adult Australians can handle:

In the sequence of game play footage titled Midnight Animal, the protagonist character bursts into what appears to be a movie set and explicitly kills 4 people, who collapse to the floor in a pool of copious blood, often accompanied by blood splatter. After stomping on the head of a fifth male character, he strikes a female character wearing red underwear. She is knocked to the floor and is viewed lying face down in a pool of copious blood. The male character is viewed with his pants halfway down, partially exposing his buttocks. He is viewed pinning the female down by the arms and lying on top of her thrusting, implicitly raping her (either rear entry or anally) while her legs are viewed kicking as she struggles beneath him. This visual depiction of implied sexual violence is emphasised by it being mid-screen, with a red backdrop pulsating and the remainder of the screen being surrounded by black.

Rape -- even implied rape -- is a very touchy subject. While normal killing-type violence is considered perfectly acceptable, adding a bit of sexual violence puts it over the top. But there are two things to consider here. One aspect is exactly how "graphic" something that looks like the following can actually be:

Now, let's throw that all out, because maybe it's just rape that's the issue, no matter the graphical fidelity.

There's also context to consider.

The Classification Board was concerned with an opening sequence—the same sequence that caused uproar after being included in a demo—that depicts a man in a pig mask sexually assaulting a woman after slaughtering everyone else in the house. Which, yes, sounds pretty bad, until a director yells cut, and it turns out the entire scene is part of an exploitative cinematic recreation of the first game.

This didn't factor into the ratings board's decision, apparently. Just seeing rape depicted was enough to refuse classification. The ratings board -- which has previously allowed developers to alter games facing bans to alter aspects found especially objectionable -- also didn't consider the fact that Hotline 2's developers give the player the choice to skip this scene completely when playing.

Devolver Digital, to its credit, has refused to alter the game to fit the Australian rating board's sensibilities. But it still wants Australian gamers to play the new game. In a response to an Australian fan asking how he might get ahold of a copy, developer Jonatan Söderström said, "Just pirate it." [click picture for a larger version]

So, Devolver Digital gives the finger to the censors by giving away its own game. The networks used to bypass the "Australian tax" will also be used to bypass the Australian ratings board, meaning this attempted ban will have no effect -- like pretty much every ban ever.

Filed Under: australia, hotline miami 2, piracy, ratings
Companies: devolver digital

CBS Blames Netflix For Its Own Secrecy Over Streaming Video Numbers

from the I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours dept

After spending the last few years suing the hell out of every and any disruptive TV innovation on the horizon (from Dish's Hopper to Aereo), CBS recently announced the launch of its own "All Access" streaming video service. The service, only available in 14 metro markets, lets users view CBS content the day after it airs on traditional television -- with advertisements included. It's a somewhat shaky value proposition, and when pushed this month to disclose how many subscribers the service has signed up since its October launch, CBS CEO Les Moonves not only refused to get specific, he felt the need to throw a jab at Netflix:

"Moonves would say only that CBS All Access was “ahead of projections,” but acknowledged that could mean as few as 10 subscribers...I've been extremely impressed with the product,” he said, adding that its subscriber base would grow as more affiliates sign up to provide a live feed of their stations’ programming over broadband...Pressed for a hard number of subscribers, Moonves replied, "When Netflix tells you how many people are watching House of Cards, we’ll tell you how many subscribers we have."

It should be fairly obvious that when you're a subscription service, ratings matter less than when you're a traditional broadcaster dealing with advertisers, but this faux outrage at Netflix secrecy was the tone CBS took for much of last week. Case in point is CBS's chief researcher David Poltrack, who couldn't help taking shots at Netflix's original series viewership numbers:

"The average adult watches 5.2 hours of content on Netflix per week, 3 hours of which are spent watching television programming of some kind. Netflix’s original series account for 6.6 percent of that viewing, David Poltrack, CBS chief research officer, said at a UBS conference today in New York. "Self-reported behavior is always subject to error,” Poltrack said. “But it’s all we have. If Netflix disagrees with anything I’m about to report, I welcome them to provide anyone with the correct numbers."

The irony is that CBS is part of an industry that's been intentionally burying its head in the sand when it comes to emerging cord cutting trends for years now, with companies like Nielsen lagging on tracking viewing on tablets and phones, and often obscuring data that tells the industry things it doesn't want to hear. Namely, that the current cable TV cash cow model has a hard expiration date that's coming up faster than executives think. Now contrast CBS's ratings and secrecy-obsessed mindset to Netflix, which points out that ratings aren't as important to the company because they can hinder the creation of good content:

"The reason we don’t give ratings is not to frustrate the press,” said (Netflix chief content officer Ted) Sarandos. “It’s an irrelevant measure of success for us."..."Maybe it has been necessary for the business of entertainment, but it’s been terrible for the creative side of television," he said. "I do think that the ratings discussion has been negative for television."

The end result has been the heavy catering to the lowest common denominator (oh hi, didn't see you standing there, reality television). Note that Netflix isn't saying ratings are worthless, just that they've traditionally been taken too seriously, and this logic only extends so far. Netflix last week premiered its $90 million magnum opus "Marco Polo." It has the second-most expensive budget on television right now, behind only HBO's "Game of Thrones." Early reviews are rather mixed and Netflix obviously isn't going to ignore viewership numbers for a venture of that scope, but the point remains that the traditional cable and broadcast industry has been so obsessed with ratings (quite often incorrect ratings telling them what they want to hear), it has sometimes struggled to see the forest for the trees.

Filed Under: david poltrack, les moonves, numbers, ratings, streaming, ted sarandos, tv
Companies: cbs, netflix

IFC Center Rejects MPAA's 'R' Rating On Snowden Documentary, Says It Should Be 'Essential Viewing'

from the informed-citizenry dept

Many people still have no idea that the MPAA "rating system" for movies is a totally voluntary system. Any official system like that would be unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment (which is why a legal attempt to rate video games got killed by the Supreme Court). It's pretty rare for theaters to ignore MPAA ratings -- though it does very rarely happen. Back in 2012, we noted that AMC theaters defied the MPAA by letting students see the documentary Bully, even though the MPAA wanted to rate it as "R" (which restricts anyone 17 and under from seeing the film without an adult).

Now, IFC Center (a major independent theater in New York) has decided to defy the MPAA's ridiculous rating system again -- for the documentary on Ed Snowden by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour. Tommy Collison on Twitter drew our attention to this after posting a photograph of the sign posted to the window of the theater: IFC has a bit more detail on its own website, noting that the theater believes that the MPAA is wrong in how it chose to rate both Citizenfour and the Richard Linklater film Boyhood, saying that it "feels that both films are appropriate viewing for mature adolescents" and will let them in accordingly.

The absolute ridiculousness of the MPAA's rating system is well documented. It's done in secret, using standards that make no sense, and are often broken for no clear reason. More than a couple of curses will get you an "R" even though plenty of sexual content is fine. If you giggle about marijuana? That's an R rating. The members of the rating board aren't known, and even though the MPAA insists they match a certain profile, investigations have shown that the MPAA frequently breaks its own rules for members of the panel. The ratings board regularly screws over indie filmmakers. If you really want to know how ridiculous the system is, just watch the documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which was in fact given a rating by the MPAA: an NC-17 rating, normally reserved for things like porn (which, yes, is in the film, but only to show what types of content get an NC-17 rating).

It's great to see at least some theaters standing up to this sort of ridiculousness -- and hopefully more will follow suit.

Filed Under: boyhood, citizenfour, ed snowden, laura poitras, movie ratings, ratings, richard linklater, voluntary
Companies: ifc, mpaa

One Year After Granting Adulthood To Video Gamers, Committee Suggests Australian Government Reenact Ban On R18+ Games

from the the-land-of-eternal-youth dept

Early in 2013, the Australian government finally recognized the fact that the average gamer is nearly 30 years old and can probably handle twice the objectionable content a 15-year-old can and passed a law creating an R18+ classification (roughly equivalent to the ESRB's "M" rating). This gave Australian gamers the chance to play something more age-appropriate, something that usually wasn't possible with the previous top-end classification of MA15+. Whatever wasn't banned outright was often gutted to meet censors' requirements.

Now, part of Australia is considering rolling that new decision back.

The Australian State of Western Australia (WA) is reviving the country's vexed games classification debate, with a new report suggesting the state government should consider banning games currently carrying an R18+ classification.

The average gamer may be nearer to a mid-life crisis than mid-teen surliness, but WA's governing bodies are still thinking about "the children."

The suggestion is contained in a report from the Joint Standing Committee on the Commissioner for Children and Young People, in the latest in a series of reports on the Sexualisation of Children.

Among various recommendations aimed at preventing the sexualization of children (including a suggestion to put government resources to work regulating child beauty pageants) is the following:

Proposal 5: Amendments to the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Enforcement Act 1996 (WA)

Further consideration be given to possible amendments to the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Enforcement Act 1996 (WA)

• To prohibit the sale, supply, demonstration, possession or advertisement of a R18+ computer game in Western Australia; or
• To provide that it is an offence for any person to supply a R18+ computer game to a minor; and/or
• To provide that it is an offence for any person to supply a R18+ film to a minor; and/or
• To provide that it is an offence for any person to supply a Category 1 Restricted publication to a minor.

The first suggestion is obviously a regression to Australia's pre-2013 days, the golden era of "computer gaming", when everyone agreed video games weren't to be played by adults. The other suggestions are slightly less odious, but still point towards the government further entrenching itself in the content-regulation business. Like similar awful legislation mooted by US lawmakers, this points towards criminal charges being levied against anyone who supplies certain content to minors. It's a bad idea, and one that infantilizes not only the "children," but adults as well, threatening to take away their choice in content as well as their own personal decisions as to what's appropriate for their children.

But the report's bad ideas aren't strictly limited to video games and other entertainment media. The report also suggests the government might be interested in regulating other areas as well.

Consideration be given to referring to the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia a review of Western Australia's laws and regulations that may impact on the regulation of the content and display of billboard and outdoor advertising to determine if there is any scope for Western Australia to regulate the nature and positioning of outdoor advertisements to ensure that children and young people are protected from exposure to sexualised images.

Government regulation of advertising is nothing new, but rather than clear-cut bans on tobacco products or alcoholic beverages, this new directive would ask the government to determine whether or not any image is too "sexualized" to be allowed to be seen by the public. Advertisers will be forced to deal with a regulating body's highly subjective views. Erring on the side of caution will be the most common option -- for both involved parties. The end result will be ad campaigns that attempt to sell products to adults by approaching them as if they were five.

The committee also thinks the government might be able to do something about sexting.

The findings of the Victorian Parliamentary Law Reform Committee inquiry into sexting be examined to determine if there are any strategies or options to reduce the negative impact of sexting on children and young people in Western Australia both generally and in relation to the sexualisation of children and young people.

The only way the government can intercede in private communications is by criminalizing certain content. The outcome of this has already been seen in the US, where sexting between minors has ended with participants being accused of sex offenses -- charges that lump them together with actual child predators and saddle them with years of government-induced ostracism.

Elsewhere, the report is very even-handed in depicting the realities of regulating content and advertising, noting that parental supervision will have far more impact than any laws that may result from its findings.

It is necessary to recognise that if sexualised media and advertising content is available to adults it is inevitable that some of this content will be accessed (either deliberately or inadvertently) or viewed by children and young people. With the convergence of media and the multitude of platforms by which children and young people can access material from the internet (for example laptops, smart phones, smart TVs, iPad, iPods and other gaming devices) laws and regulations cannot alone protect children and young people from the potential harmful effects of being exposed to premature or inappropriate sexualised content.

It also notes that this committee's desire to head off the sexualization of children may veer into damaging witch hunts if not tempered, especially if the "sexualization" itself is given too broad of a definition.

There is a risk that if a broad definition is adopted, the extent of sexualisation of children may be overestimated or that the more serious examples of inappropriate sexualisation will be overlooked. Incidentally, it has been observed that one commentator (Catharine Lumby) is concerned that 'by having this conversation [about sexualisation] all the time we'll end up looking for sexual images of children where there aren't [any]'.

The problem is that, no matter how well-written and even-handed the report is (and much of it is), it's being handed over to government bodies which tend to prefer broad brushwork to subtlety. What's completely intolerable to most legislators is admitting there's very little they can do to address convoluted issues like these, at least not without making things much worse. All it takes is a few bits of anecdotal evidence to fuel the lawmaking fire and Australians could see their government (or at least the Western State side) slip back into censor mode.

Taking away adults' choices because children might avail themselves of the content isn't the answer but this report presents it as being just that, a potential "fix" for a societal issue. Video games have long been low-hanging fruit for legislators whose reach never exceeds their limited grasp and "for the children" may be all the excuse they need to roll back the recently-granted adulthood of its gaming population.

There's plenty in the report that warns against such legislative band-aids, but the most troubling suggestions are right up front, easily skimmable and bullet-pointed. Which part of this report is likely to see more politician eyeballs? The first 15 pages, with all the "remedies" and "do somethings?" Or the last 100+ pages, where the subtleties, nuances and limitations of legislative action are thoroughly discussed?

Filed Under: adults, australia, bans, mature, r18+, ratings, video games, western australia