It is bizarre that broadcasters are, quite rightly, unable to broadcast certain material ‘on air’ until after the watershed but are quite free to broadcast the same material over the internet at any time without there being adequate protection mechanisms in place.  

Regulation must catch up with innovation.

In December 2009 the new Audio Visual Media Services (AVMS) Directive came into force which requires that children should not ‘normally be able to see or hear’ ‘material which might seriously impair [their] physical, mental or moral development’.

We wrote to all the main broadcasters, Ofcom, the Minister and Shadow Ministers for Culture asking them to explain the current situation in the light of these regulations. Ofcom and the DCMS responded stating that they do not consider that material which could harm children is ever broadcast on television so no change is needed.

In February 2012 we were able to access, on a mainstream broadcaster’s website:

Generation Sex – documentary with explicit sexual content

Sex: How to do Everything – documentary with explicit sexual content

Sons of Anarchy – drama with violence, drugs and strong language

We do not consider this to be healthy viewing for children and yet it is available to all by clicking a button to confirm the viewer is 18.  This is simple for a child to do and makes a mockery of the purpose and effect of the Watershed.  Indeed, marking programmes as being unsuitable for children whilst offering no real safeguards to stop them doing so may even encourage children to view them in the first place.

Following a meeting with the then Shadow Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey, a policy paper on this issue was prepared. The paper was then submitted to the House of Commons scrutiny department to be used as evidence as the public bill committee which was to examine the Digital Economy Bill. However, the committee never sat as the bill went through, unexamined, in ‘wash-up’ after the 2010 general election.

We worked with a number of journalists writing about this anomaly but many were frustrated in their attempts to put stories together by Ofcom.  The Sunday Express finally made the issue front page news in March 2011.

In January 2011 the BBC launched a consultation for viewers on their on-demand offerings.  We, and many of our supporters responded flagging up the issue of child protection. The subsequent report from the BBC Trust concluded that more needed to be done to raise awareness of parental controls to stop children from accessing potentially harmful content.

In summer 2011 the Radio Times began to include VOD recommendations in its weekly listings. We wrote to the editor urging him to include details of the parental controls available the sites offer.  Happily in the autumn their user guide was updated to include this information. 

In September 2011 regulation of video-on-demand passed to ATVOD (the Authority for Television on Demand).  We wrote to them pointing out that there is no standard parental control across the various VOD platforms and asking if they issued best practice guidelines for this.  They replied to say they are consulting with Ofcom into what controls would be acceptable and they will publish the findings on their website in due course. ATVOD subsequently cleared Channel 4’s video on-demand service for offering a controversial episode of Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights.

The episode featured a range of derogatory statements about celebrities.   Ofcom received many complaints about the programme, including one from Katie Price, who accused Boyle of being a “bully” over comments made about her disabled son Harvey.

ATVOD ruled that Tramadol Nights would not seriously impair the development of under-18s and so decided not to take any further action.  ATVOD chair, Ruth Evans, said:

“Many viewers may regard the material as highly offensive and unsuitable for under-18s, including  people with disabilities, but providing such content to under 18s is not a breach of the rules set by parliament if it does not fall foul of the ‘might seriously impair’ test.” 

This begs the question “are the rules up to the job and is it time to update them?”

 

We asked for another piece of Channel 4 VOD content to be removed. This featured violent footage – including a man having a nail hammered into the skin between his thumb and finger and then extracted – but we were told this content would not seriously impair a child either.

In 2012 we met with the Shadow Media for Culture, Media & Sport to discuss the problem.  We prepared an updated policy proposal and discussed the policy of tabling an amendment to the forthcoming Communications Bill.

We welcome the public discussion into online age verification technologies currently taking place within the context of protecting children from adult sites.  We hope that this will lead to meaningful protections for children being established on broadcaster’s VOD sites.