Sex on TV



February 10, 2001



BOB GARFIELD: Welcome back to On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week a couple of teenage girls I know were pretty excited about an upcoming episode of the WB high school drama Dawson's Creek. It seems that Joey and Pacey, a girl and boy engaged in some heavy breathing all season, were scheduled to have sex. Ten years ago this would have been a big deal, but not any more. According to a study released this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation the number of programs with sexual content has soared from about half to more than two-thirds over the last two years. Even higher in prime time. What apparently have not increased are messages about what the study calls safer sex which had remained steady at about ten percent of all programs with sexual content.