30/09/2008

Repeats of the crime drama series, Taggart, have got its makers into trouble with the broadcasting regulators, including for one episode showing a woman being forced to swallow bleach.

The problem was that the repeats - on ITV1 - were shown during the late afternoon, when children could be tuning in. The regulator found ITV1 in breach of its rules on violence, protecting children and meeting audience expectation.

The series - made by the owners of stv - was orginally made for a 9pm broadcast slot. But ITV had emptied what used to be children’s programming during the late afternoon, leaving stv to respond at ‘short notice’ with a request to fill the gap. While it undertook edits to make the episodes less grissly, Ofcom says there were not enough.

Nor were the regulators convinced by the argument that, in advance of the broadcasts, the audience would be aware of what they were letting themselves in for, notwithstanding Taggart’s reputation as consisting of at least one murder. And not all the episodes were teed up with a warning of what was about to follow.

Reports Ofcom: “stv confirmed that some episodes of Taggart were considered unsuitable for an afternoon timeslot because of the subject matter. For the episodes that were shown, the broadcaster said the programme was edited to reduce the levels of violence. Overall, stv considered the low level of the child audience – over the afternoon repeats, an average two per cent of viewers to the programme were children – indicated that the programmes had been appropriately scheduled.

“stv pointed out that the sequence where a man set himself alight could not be edited out entirely for reasons of continuity. In retrospect, it considered that this episode was inappropriate for broadcast in the afternoon.” 

Six episodes - broadcast in May and June - were the subject of complaints from the general public. Ofcom estimates that 15,000 people aged under 15 will have watched each of the episodes.

Added Ofcom: “Whilst [we note] the desire of ITV1 to move away from children’s programming in some of its afternoon timeslots towards crime drama, audiences do not expect inappropriate material to be shown at this time. We acknowledge that stv made some edits to the episodes complained of. Its argument that some inappropriate sequences were not edited out completely because this would have interrupted the continuity of the programme, but that nonetheless the relevant episode was suitable for broadcast, is not acceptable. Such an episode, in Ofcom’s view, may simply not be appropriate for broadcast in the afternoon.”

Ofcom’s adjudication was published yesterday, less than 24 hours after a documentary was broadcast on stv celebrating Taggart’s 25th birthday.

For more, click here.

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