Pro-Life Philippines Reiterates Objection to the Airing of Pinoy Big Brother
|
|
In a letter to ABS-CBN President and Chief Executive Officer, Eugenio Lopez III, dated 22 April 2007, Pro-Life Philippines reiterated its objection to the airing of Pinoy Big Brother (PBB), contending that it is, in fact, the very nature and format of the show that is indecent, with the offensive content being a logical offshoot of it.
|
(See: )
PBB, a franchise of an international television reality Big Brother (Pinoy being a colloquial term for Filipino, ), was put on the air in August 2005 by ABS-CBN, during what Patrick Flores describes in his article “ Reality and televison” ( Manila Standard Today, 08/30/2005) as “ a season of decline and necessary retrenchments” for the network.
The first series started its first primetime episode on August 22, 2005, with the finale being held on December 10, 2005. The second series began its run on February 25, 2007, and is scheduled to run for 126 days. It is shown in ABS-CBN Channel 2 and its international affiliate, The Filipino Channel. Snippets are shown on local affiliate Studio 23. The uncut 24/7 version of the series can be seen on the internet and a special cable channel provided by ABS-CBN-owned cable TV provider, SkyCable.
PBB follows the same format as its foreign counterparts: 12 residents (called housemates) are forced to live with each other inside a house for about 100 days. They are controlled by a voice known only as “Big Brother,” who gives them weekly/daily challenges, and confronts them about their personal lives in a “confessional room.” Through a process of elimination that also includes viewer voting through SMS, the housemates are evicted from the house one by one. The winner gets the grand prize that consists of a package worth about six million pesos.
Even from the start, ABS-CBN had already received protests over the airing of PBB. On its first week alone, the show was given a stern warning by the MTCRB, saying that it airs content that is definitely not suitable for children, such as talk about contraceptives and “very intimate” scenes. Likewise, Pro-life Philippines, along with other multi-sectoral groups, submitted a position paper to MTRCB registering its objection to the airing of PBB because of its bad implications not only to children but to society in general.
Acknowledging these objections, ABS-CBN then began each episode with a reminder to the audience that some scenes in the show are not suitable to young audiences. In spite of this, scenes that were deemed to be beyond the parental guidance rating given by MTRCB were still shown, prompting MTRCB to suspend the program for its September 25, 2005 episode.
Two years after the numerous protests over PBB’s airing were manifested both with ABS-CBN and MTRCB, ABS-CBN continues to air the show with its offensive content.
Reference :
|
|
