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Television

The Decline of Morality in American Television

Deeona Marie Nussbaum

Axia College of the University of Phoenix

COM 150 Effective Essay Writing

What is happening with our television shows? Is it possible for Hollywood to clean up

their act? TV executives would say that it is entertainment and freedom of speech. While

Hollywood and our society think it is fine, when did it become acceptable to use

profanity on television? Look at the differences from TV 40 years ago and today. The

morality and standards of television in America are declining. Has Hollywood forgotten

how to write clean, fun, and entertaining shows without profanity, violence, or offensive

material in the TV shows? Do people enjoy the foul language, the bleeping of words or the blurred shadow over a body part? Indeed, almost all of our TV shows have some kind of offensive material in them and when they say a cuss word, depending on what type of show it is, you will hear a bleep or the actual word. If it happens to be the “F” word, which seems to be the only word now in TV that is not acceptable to say, accordingly there will be a bleep. Given the vast amounts of foul language and offensive material, reality shows are the worst. Many of these shows are during primetime scheduled broadcasting hours or before 10 pm. Some of the best examples of these shows are Jackass, Scarred, South Park, and The Osbournes. Where are our family shows? Where are the family values set in shows such as Little House on the Prairie or The Cosby Show?

Can networks explain to us how they can use profanity in shows and not bleep the words out, but will put a blurred shadow over a baby’s butt. A prime example is TV’s Funniest Videos, they show a dog pulling down a baby’s diaper, which in turn will expose the butt, now blurred as if it was a terrible sight to see or the audience is too stupid to know that it is a baby’s butt. Equally important was an episode of the Oprah show and...