Disney execs prove it's a small thinking world after all

It's a world of laughter. It's a world of tears. It's a world where our children are being marketed to at every turn.

Until recently there was a world of difference between watching children's TV on Disney Channel and watching the same programs on free-to-air TV.

Disney was an ad-free zone, a safe place where children might learn to talk about recess and janitors but where they could watch TV without being bombarded with messages to buy, buy, buy.

That world has now gone. Watching the Disney Channel on the weekend was as bad as watching Saturday Disney on the 7 Network - wall-to-wall ads only broken occasionally to fit in some programming.

It's a crying shame that Disney has effectively sold out on kids and a decision that ultimately may cost them. I can not be the only parent that factored in the lack of ads into the decision to subscribe to Pay TV.

The high rotation ad for Dog Poo Barbie - a Barbie Accessory called Tanner which comes with a pooper scooper to help waif-girl be a responsible pet owner - is making me question the value of my investment.

The Disney Magical Kingdom just lost much of its sparkle

Report covers more than #$%^&* Ramsay

Understandable media interest in the Australian Senate’s reaction to the potty-mouth Gordon Ramsay allowed other aspects of the Effectiveness of the Broadcasting codes of practice standing committee report to be overlooked.
The report, released last week, noted a number of interesting changes in the patterns of family viewing which impact on children’s exposure to unsuitable material. It notes, for example, that children are staying up later which increases their exposure to adult material and that the use of the remote makes channel surfing and therefore parental control more difficult to maintain.
But perhaps the most interesting reading was contained in the section relating to news and current affairs.
The committee found that “current affairs broadcasting, as it tends more towards ‘infotainment’ relies increasingly on a diet of graphic and sensationalised reporting of violent crime, spectacular accidents and the like. These stories often have little intrinsic merit as news but do provide an opportunity to screen graphic images during early evening time slots which may be distressing to children”.
There was also concern about unsavory content in other television programs becoming the news story increasing the exposure to a much larger number of children. Gordon Ramsay’s swearing and “the more prurient incidents on Big Brother” (no doubt the turkey slapping incident) came in for special mention.
“This results in the very material that was found offensive by some in a later time slot being televised much earlier in the evening as part of a news or current affairs program”.
Curiously, despite the concern, the committee put the onus back on broadcasters its recommendation 6 saying “The Committee does not wish to tell television stations what they should be in news and current affairs programming”. Why ever not?
What exactly is the point of spending taxpayers’ money on the effectiveness of existing regulations and then washing your hands on the matter?
The committee did recommend “that ACMA, in consultation with broadcasters, review the sections of the Classification Code applying to news and current affairs programming, with regard to the use of graphic and disturbing imagery and excerpts from M or higher rated programs in news and current affairs broadcasting in early evening time zones”.
Yes, yes, heard it all before.
In 1996 for example, in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre, the Commonwealth Government established a Committee of Ministers on the Portrayal of Violence in the Media. When the report was tabled in the Senate in February 1997 arguably its most contentious recommendation was for a toned down early evening news bulletin saying "when reporting items which are identified by television stations themselves as being accompanied by 'disturbing footage', that footage should only be shown in later evening bulletins and not during the early evening news bulletin when large numbers of children are watching television".
But when the Government’s official response to the report was tabled any talk of enforcement was removed and replaced by broadcasters being “strongly urged” "to be vigilant in meeting the requirements of their codes of practice".
Then in 2000, Victorian Government's Family and Community Development Committee brought down its final report on The effects of Television and Multimedia on children & families in Victoria, urging broadcasters to keep disturbing footage out of the early evening news bulletins.
And here we are in 2008 still politely asking broadcasters to do the right thing.
There is no doubt news creates an especially difficult area for broadcasters. Many of the events journalists cover are violent, disturbing and graphic – that’s what makes them news. But repeatedly parents are telling inquiries that at times the choice of language and images crosses the line in what it acceptable in family viewing times.
They have the right to wonder if anyone is listening.

The bus stops here - government begged to start belting our kids

Why is allowing one child to travel unrestrained in a vehicle an infringement that attracts a $225 fine but allowing 75 children to travel unrestrained is called a school excursion?
There have been federal laws in place since 1995 requiring all schools buses travelling on open non-urban roads to be fitted with seatbelts but on local roads there are no regulations demanding seat belts.
Surely this can’t be because legislators only believe that school bus accidents happen on open highways. Of course not. It’s a question of cost.
Apparently “retrofitting” seatbelts to old buses is just too expensive. Which raises a question “what price do you put on a child’s life”? or even “what price would you put on the lives of a bus-load of children’s lives”.
It is seven years since the Queensland Law Society urged the School Transport Safety Task Force to make school bus seatbelts mandatory relating the case of a serious school bus accident where “children were tossed in the air and thrown about like rag dolls inside the bus”.
And three years ago Queensland became the first state to make seatbelts compulsory on school buses travelling in mountainous regions but on city streets bus passengers are offered less protection than those in the family sedan.
Which means I can expect my son to be offered a reasonable level of protection when he heads off to school camp later in the year but had to cross my fingers and hope when he went on a banana bus school excursion to the Planetarium this week.
My guess is that it will take a major accident involving a school bus on a city street to force change.
I pray I am not right.

A warning wouldn't hurt

The Picasso exhibition which opened at The Gallery of Modern Art today is a coup and guaranteed to drag the crowds in.
It's an intriguing, interesting and at times confronting collection of works by the artist as well as works that inspired the artist enough to find their way into Picasso's private collection.
It will not be everyone's cup of tea and in fact there may be many parents who would prefer that their kids didn't see all of the works on show.
A wall from Picasso's erotic period, which is graphic in its depiction of female genitalia, is not the stuff of primary school text books.
In a way it is a testament to our maturity that Queensland's premier Anna Bligh could be paraded in front of the drawings without a blink while a collection of similar erotic Picassos was never taken to New York because of what was described as cultural censorship.
No-one would want to see the exhibition banned or censored but a word of warning would be nice.
Remember this same exhibition has an accompanying Yo Picasso exhibit with activities designed to amuse little children and children are being admitted free to see the show.
And Arts Minister Rod Welford said "I encourage all Queenslanders to get along to GOMA in the coming months to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience".
Other exhibits have moved the more graphic material to an area which allows families to bypass the more confronting material should they choose.
The same approach would be appropriate here.
Outside the walls of a gallery this is not the sort of stuff many of us would choose to let our children see. The same consideration within the gallery would be in order.

TV producers put sting in the Scorpion's tail

Australian families are rushing to have a chance to see their children take part in the next big reality TV hit Escape from Scorpion Island.
The show – the second series of a show to be produced by the BBC in the UK but the first to be filmed in Australia – will see 16 British and Australian kidsaged between 11 and 14 marooned on an exotic island.
In tried and true reality TV style, the children will compete in teams to be the first to conquer the island and learn how to escape from it.
This is all sounding a bit Lord of the Flies to me.
Others seems less concerned.
Tim Brooke-Hunt, ABC TV's Executive Head of Children's, has described the new joint venture as “an exciting new initiative for ABC Kids Television”.
“Since the Australian call for contestants went out a week and ahalf ago, there has been over 21,000 web views and over 10,000entry-form downloads," he says.
Good television possibly but is deliberately marooning your kids on an island good parenting?
Celebrity psychologist an counselor Dr. Laura Schlessinger would clearly not think so.
She says of reality TV involving children: “It is not enough to argue that these children have their parents’ permission – parents cannot legally pimp their children, yet this is precisely what is going on here.
“The privacy and dignity of these children have been stripped from them. They are hawked by cameras as their so-called parents push the envelope farther than any responsible, loving, protective parent should, in an attempt to gain ratings and increase celebrity status.”
While that seems a bit harsh, the growing trend of recruiting children for reality TV shows is worrying.
Right now, a British TV program, being filmed in Australia, forces fat children to hunt for food with Aborigines. Even the title Fat Kids Can't Hunt should be cause for concern.
And then there was the US-produced Kid Nation which put 40 eight-to-15-year-olds in a New Mexico ghost town and asked them to form a functioning society.
To take part in that show parents had to sign a waiver giving away their right to sue CBS even if their kids contracted an STD or died. There was also grave concern about the show violating child labour laws – none of which bothered the parents desperate to see their kids involved in the second series.
No-one is arguing that Escape from Scorpion Island will be anything like this but really do we need it?
Many will argue that wrapping our kids in cotton wool does them no good in the end but should we really be feeding them to the TV sharks and filming the experience?
I think not.

Cinemas say "tell someone who cares"

For months now I have been complaining about the inability of one particular cinema chain to adhere to federal regulations in relation to the screening of cinema trailers - in short the regulations say that a cinema can not exhibit a trailer for a movie classified higher than the feature film.

After a swag of infringements culminating in April with the screening of a trailer for the M Classified And then She Found Me during the G Classified bible Film The 10 Commandments was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I sent four letters of complaint on April 28 - 29

• To Kevin Rudd as the Federal Member in the electorate where the offences took place;
  
• Wayne Swan my Federal MP,
  
• the Federal Attorney General's office as the regulator


• and the cinema owner.

The replies arrived are in

• Kevin Rudd referred me to Wayne Swan


• Wayne Swan referred me to the Australian Communications and Media Authority
  
• The Federal Attorney General's office referred me to the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General and Office of Fair Trading (while stating that the cinema chain had been contacted and reminded of its responsibilities)


• And my favourite was from the cinema owner who said "it would please me if you went to other cinemas" He also insists "We can place a PG trailer on a G rated film" Really?
  He must be reading a different code from me

I suggest that he looks at the relevant section of the act displayed at Classification.gov.au
It says "Restrictions for screening trailersFilm advertising (eg trailers) for a classified film can only be publicly exhibited with a feature film of the same or higher classification. That is:
Film advertising for G films can be screened with all films
Film advertising for PG films can only be screened with PG, M, MA 15+ or R 18+ films
Film advertising for M films can only be screened with M, MA 15+ or R 18+ films
Film advertising for MA 15+ films can only be screened with MA 15+ or R 18+ films
Film advertising for R 18+ films can only be screened with R 18+ or X18+ films.
Film advertising for X 18+ films can only be screened with X 18+ films (only in ACT and NT)."

Further he claims the reason the trailers may be wrongly screened is because there is often little time between the classification and when the film is shown. That would be a defensible position if only it stacked up.

In the 11 documented cases I presented him with, the time elapsed between when the film was classified and when the trailer was shown were as follows: 81 days, 50 days, 2 days, 57 days , 36 days, 110 days, 38 days, 45 days, 41 days, 45 days and 52 days. Two days might be a reasonable excuse but with all of the others in excess of a month, I don't think so.

It may please the owner if I went somewhere else but it's not going to happen. It would please me if he did the right thing and with a whole new set of contacts thanks to the buck-passing of those meant to enforce Federal Government policy it's game on.

The mother of all insanities

Necessity may be the mother of all inventions but this just seems to be pandering to the mother of all insecurities. Power parents seeking power parenting tools.

Business cards for mums. Yes, being a mother is the most important job anyone can take on but is it one that requires a business card? Mummy cards are apparently "for anyone tired of rummaging through bags for a scrap of paper and pen to exchange contact details".

This, according to the website, is how we communicate to other mothers details such as our home number, mobile number, email address, home address, children's names, birth dates or allergies.

So rather than getting to know a new mum or dad before dropping off our child for a party or play we thrust a business card in a parent's hand and cut and run confident they have all the necessary information to safely care for out little one.

Even if you accept that these could be handy, just how often would you really need one (if you don't count the over-sized gold fish bowls at the counter of the local coffee shop)?

These cards come in boxes of 100 which at $80 plus $10 postage works out at 90 cents each - rather a lot for exchanging contact details.

Dealing with the other school parents is not like closing a corporate deal and doesn't require the same tools. Let's leave the business cards for the suits.