TV News

The BBC's Burmese language service is pulling a broadcasting deal with a popular Myanmar television channel citing censorship, with insiders saying the partners had clashed over coverage of the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Since April 2014, BBC Burmese broadcast a daily news programme on MNTV with 3.7 million daily viewers. Now the BBC said it was ending the deal after MNTV censored or pulled multiple programmes since March this year.

The spat seems to be that the local channel objected to the BBC's use of the word Rohingya in their reports. Myanmar's government -- and most local media -- call them Bengalis, portraying them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite many living in the country for generations.

familyfirst.org.nz whines:

A reality TV dating show with full-frontal nudity has proven to be a turn off for some Kiwi viewers.

TVNZ confirmed the broadcaster has received complaints about UK series Naked Attraction, which sees potential love interests introduced by gradually stripping bare in completely uncensored footage.

Season one of the show has joined TVNZ 2's Friday night line-up, with the first episode featuring an average of five penises and two vaginas every minute, according to the Daily Mail.

A TVNZ spokeswoman said the show was unlike anything screened on TVNZ 2 before:

We feel that Naked Attraction is revealing and made to be entertaining.

As the programme contains nudity it is screened in a 9:30pm Adults Only time slot. It carries a clear content and nudity warning before broadcast, giving viewers the choice over whether they would like [to] remain watching the programme, or prefer to watch another TVNZ channel instead.

Lobby group Family First lashed out at the show earlier this month in a public letter to the Minister of Broadcasting Clare Curran titled State broadcaster competes with porn sites for content.

National director of Family First Bob McCoskrie compared the show to porn and questioned why it was screened on a Friday night when children were likely to be watching TV.

Full frontal nudity has always been off-limits on television but it now seems that anything goes and that it is a race to the most offensive and shocking content possible. 'Broadcasting standards' is an oxymoron. 'Family viewing' should now be treated with great caution.

Family First said they had been swamped with complaints from families horrified at how the show has caused free-to-air TV standards to hit rock bottom.

Channel 4 has scrapped a planned drama based in North Korea after Kim Jong-un's regime hacked into its systems and 'scared investors into withdrawing their funding.

The ten-part thriller, Opposite Number , was to be about a mission to rescue a British nuclear scientist who had been taken prisoner in North Korea.

North Korea's most senior military body, the National Defence Commission, initially said British authorities should punish those behind the project, which they branded a slanderous farce. Shortly afterwards, security agencies discovered that hackers had breached Channel 4's systems.

They did not manage to inflict any great damage immediately, so David Abraham, Channel 4's chief executive, vowed to keep on filming, according to the New York Times. However, he was forced to backtrack when the full scale of the damage the hackers could cause became clear.

But while Channel 4 was still willing to run Opposite Number, the Sony scandal made the TV series' other financial backers nervous. International broadcasters that had promised to help pay for the project pulled out -- leaving the project short of funding. Despite the potential fallout, Channel 4 insiders said yesterday the series could still go ahead if it secured new backing.

Qatar is under the cosh in the Middle East caught in a deadly pincer movement of a Saudi led coalition of Arab countries on one side and Israel on the other. All these countries object to Qatar's funding of the Al Jazeera news channel which provides seeming well balanced reporting across the region in both Arabic and English. Its seems that Qatar's neighbours would prefer the news to be dominated by their own, not quite so balanced, news networks, that are a little bit more sycophantic to their own interests.

So perhaps it was hardly surprising that an Al Jazeera documentary investigating the Isreali Embassy in London would be reported to Ofcom for supposed bias.

The UK TV censor Ofcom investigated Al Jazeera after receiving complaints about The Lobby , a four-part documentary investigating the political influence of the Israeli embassy in Britain.

The programme showed Shai Masot, an official in the Israeli embassy in London, saying he would take down MPs including Sir Alan Duncan , the Foreign Office minister who is an outspoken supporter of a Palestinian state. The Israeli ambassador subsequently apologised for the comments and Masot resigned.

Ofcom cleared al-Jazeera after concluding it did not make allegations in the documentary that were based on the grounds of individuals being Jewish and that it had included the view of the Israeli government in the programme. It ruled that al-Jazeera had not breached rule 2.3, which relates to offensive matter, and rule 5.5 with regards to impartiality. Ofcom said:

It was the view of some complainants that The Lobby fuelled harmful stereotypes about Jewish people controlling or seeking to control powerful organisations. These complainants considered this was antisemitic and offensive.

We considered that the allegations in the programme were not made on the grounds that any of the particular individuals concerned were Jewish and noted that no claims were made relating to their faith. We did not consider that the programme portrayed any negative stereotypes of Jewish people as controlling or seeking to control the media or governments. Rather, it was our view that these individuals featured in the programme in the context of its investigation into the alleged activities of a foreign state -- the state of Israel acting through its UK embassy -- and their association with it.

An al-Jazeera source welcomed the ruling, saying:

This goes to show that no matter what al-Jazeera's critics say, its journalism meets and exceeds the highest standards of objectivity and balance. We feel vindicated by the rulings and ever more committed to exposing human rights violations by anyone -- regardless of geography, religion, or the power of their lobbies.

Moscow has warning the US that it may restrict US media in Russia. Russian officials have accused Washington of putting unwarranted pressure on the U.S. operations of Russia Today. A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said Russia was within its rights to restrict operations of U.S. media outlets in the country

A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the full weight of the U.S. authorities was being brought to bear against RT's operations in the United States, and that Moscow had the right to respond.

She did not identify any specific U.S. media outlets that would be targeted. She said it made no difference from the Russian government's point of view if those outlets were backed by the U.S. state, or privately-funded. However late last month, Russia's state TV censor accused U.S. TV channel CNN International of violating its license to broadcast in Russia and said it had summoned the broadcaster's representatives in connection with the matter.

The ambassadors to the Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain, hardly countries that have any notion of free speech, have said that UK TV censor, Ofcom, should establish if the services breached British or European directives.

Al Jazeera is based in Doha and the four countries boycotting Qatar accuse the TV station of promoting an extremist agenda. Closing down the station and its affiliates was one of the conditions imposed by the Arab quartet leadership for lifting the boycott on Qatar.

The five point request from the ambassadors to Ofcom asked for an assessment that Al Jazeera was fit to hold a broadcasting licence when it was a platform for allegedly positive or sympathetic coverage of ISIL. This includes references to it as an organisation, rather than a terrorist group.

An Ofcom spokeswoman said it had passed this letter of complaint to the media regulator in Italy, where the [Arabic] channel holds its licence, for urgent consideration.

Indonesia's Trans TV will surely become a cropper

Indonesian lawmakers have agreed a proposed law that would ban anything gay on TV. Among the list of criteria for outlawed content in broadcasts includes programs containing LGBT behaviour.

The law would require the screening of all TV shows, films and adverts by an external censorship body prior to broadcast in order to ensure compliance with the new rules.

The ban has broad support from across the parties in the country. Supiadin Aries Saputra of the NasDem Party said:

We can't allow LGBT behaviour on TV. It is against our culture. We have to ban it early before it becomes a lifestyle. It's dangerous and can ruin the morality of the younger generation.

It is legal to be gay in Indonesia apart from Aceh province, which implements its own nasty punishments under Islamic law.

Streaming service Netflix has pulled an episode of the cartoon series Maya the Bee after a viewer complained it contained an explicit drawing.

A screen grab of the offending scene appears to show an outline of a penis etched on a log in the background.

The 35th episode of the show's first season was pulled after US mother Chey Robinson posted a clip on Facebook,

The TV show is not available to UK Netflix subscribers

Cheeky animators have a history of sneaking in suggestive imagery into cartoons, apparently in the expectation their private jokes would remain so.

Update: Cartoon makers apologise for being dicks

25th September 2017. See article from bbc.com . Thanks to Nick.

An outline of a penis that appeared in a Maya the Bee episode was the result of a very bad joke, the makers of the children's animated series have said. Belgian company Studio 100 said the image was absolutely inappropriate and offered apologies to everybody who has been offended by it.

Studio 100 told the BBC the penis, etched on a log in the background of a scene, obviously results from a very bad joke from one of the 150 artists working on the production. This is indeed unacceptable to Studio 100 as owner of the brand and all its affiliates and doesn't reflect the quality of our work and our values, it continued. The Paris-based company said it was very sorry and that it was taking all suitable technical measures to remedy the situation.

An Indian TV show which depicted a bizarre love story between a nine-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman has been pulled off air following criticism that it promoted child marriage and was regressive.

In a statement, Sony Entertainment Television said they were cancelling the controversial daily soap Pehredaar Piya Ki (Husband's Guard).

The show which launched in mid-July, had attracted a lot of negative attention right from the beginning for the unusual love story at its centre.

The show's troubles began when Jai Ho Foundation, a Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation, petitioned authorities, demanding an immediate ban on it, describing it as indecent and unfit for children. Jai Ho said in a complaint letter to India's Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani:

A child is seen caressing, stalking and having a relationship of a sexual nature with a lady who is more than double his age... This is an indecent and obscene representation of a child for the purpose of representing sexual relationship.

The programme also prompted a lot of social media outrage in a country where child marriage is still rampant. A petition addressed to Ms Irani on change.org gathered more than 100,000 signatures, prompting the minister to write to the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC) to take prompt action against the show.

The BCCC ordered the show timings to be changed from the prime time slot of 8:30pm to 10:30pm and the show also began putting out a disclaimer saying we do not support child marriage.

Not sure if you were aware of this, but Tuesday 18th's premiere of Season 2, Episode 9 (Sic Transit Imperium) of Sky Atlantic's imported US Showtime drama BILLIONS , had a heavily censored subtitle track for Deaf/Hard of Hearing viewers added to it. Every single swear-word was edited.

Fuck became heck, frick, frig, screw, freak, crap Fucking became sucking, fricking, frigging, freaking, freaky, fracking Shit became stuff, hell, crap Pussy became punk Bullshit became bullspit Goddam became gosh-darn, full-blown (yes, really!) Motherfucker became money-grabber Fuck this became forget this

The only rude words that survived intact were crap and ass .

Whoever did that episode's subtitling clearly had an issue with all the adult language. I've never seen anything like this, since the 1980's/90's days of films on ITV (like ALIENS or DIE HARD).

Update: Freaking censors

29th April 2017. Thanks to Jon

Re the censored subtitling on Season 2, episodes 9 and 10 of BILLIONS (currently showing on Sky Atlantic).

Sky has now e-mailed Jon to say that the subtitles they broadcast, are the same ones used by Showtime in the USA.

Here's the video evidence of what the audio sounds like, and what the subtitles claim are being said. It's funny...

The Danish Girl is a 2015 UK / Germany / USA biography by Tom Hooper.
Starring Amber Heard, Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne.

The remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

A scheduled TV showing of Hollywood film The Danish Girl has been cancelled on the rders of the Indian film censor.

According to a source the Central Board Of Film Certification (CBFC) objected to the film due to its sensitive storyline. The movie went to CBFC for clearance three months ago and they were sitting on it. And now they have cancelled the broadcast citing that the issue is very sensitive... CBFC has put a ban across channels, and now no other channel can also show the film.

The film, which released theatrically in India last year with the film censor's blessing, but TV appears to be a small step too far.

NatWest has reversed its decision to close the UK bank accounts of the Kremlin-backed news channel RT, formerly known as Russia Today.

The bank wrote to the company that provides RT services in the UK last October, saying it would no longer provide banking services following a review and the decision was final.

However, in a statement this week, NatWest said it had reached a resolution with RT. Natwest is part of the RBS Group which is largely owned by the British state.

NatWest has not said why it decided to close the accounts, but it is understood that the bank's compliance department has closed down the accounts of Russian customers in the past without explanation.

Moralist TV campaigners at Parents TV Council have praised a new TV comedy, The Mick . The PTC writes:

The Parents Television Council is urging its members and the public to tell Verizon to stop underwriting graphic content on Fox's new TV show, The Mick, which disturbingly features minor children using explicit language and put into sexualized situations. Ads for Verizon FiOS and Pixel were aired on The Mick.

In the show, teens are shown smoking, drinking, and swearing, as their alcoholic, drug-using aunt does nothing to set boundaries or stop them. A six- or seven-year-old boy accidentally ingests a balloon filled with drugs; a teenage girl has sex with an adult man and engages in a drinking contest with her legal guardian, among other egregious examples.

PTC President Tim Winter. said:

Verizon should refuse to be associated with such destructive and harmful TV content on 'The Mick.' Apparently the show's producers and network executives believe such disturbing content is appropriate for the public airwaves, even at times when children are likely to be watching. Verizon must choose whether it will invest its media dollars to underwrite such content. Child characters should not be used for 'shock value,' and supporting a show that makes children participants in that kind of vulgarity directly calls into question Verizon's corporate standards

The PTC recently documented that broadcast TV shows are more frequently using children to say explicit language and put them in adult situations, a trend that The Mick continues.