KSL-TV, the NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City, is owned by a corporation owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
But that doesn’t mean you’ll see all of NBC’s fare when you tune in. For years it has not shown Saturday Night Live — and this week it said it would not show The Playboy Club, which NBC calls a provocative series set in the early 1960s about Chicago’s famous Playboy Club that is “is the door to all your fantasies.” (See: Mad Men.)
KSL head Mark Willes (a former publisher of the Los Angeles Times) told the Deseret News (also controlled by the church) that broadcasting the show “would be helping to build a brand that stands for pornography. For us, that’s just untenable.”
The TV critic for The Salt Lake Tribune, a subsidiary of the MediaNews Group, says KSL is hypocritical. Scott D. Pierce wasn’t overwhelmed by the quality of the show’s pilot episode, but he said it’s just a crime drama in which women wear clothing that seems tame by today’s standards.
And he says KSL shows much worse stuff with each episode of Law and Order: SVU and other programs offered by NBC. If The Playboy Club went by another name, KSL would show it, he said.
His conclusion:
So if KSL, DMC [Deseret Media Companies] and their owners, the LDS Church, want to be consistent, there are two options.
First, give up the NBC affiliation and become an independent station. Which would be tough to pull off economically.
Second, sell the station.
Otherwise, they’re taking a stand on a title and ignoring program content altogether.
Questions for discussion:
* Is this an ethical issue? Why or why not?
* Is KSL being hypocritical, as some charge?
* How can a media outlet controlled by a religious organization find a balance between meeting its religious mission, making money, and attracting consumers?
* Historians remind us that, during the 1950s and 1960s, some TV stations in the South refused to show network programs that included blacks and pressured network news organizations about reports of civil rights unrest. Is that similar to KSL’s situation?
* Put yourself in the shoes of KSL’s Mark Willes and respond to the criticism from Scott D. Pierce. Is KSL being hypocritical?
* In this world of Hulu.com and NBC.com, in which people with Internet access usually can find the content they seek, does it really matter what one affiliate does?
* Work through the “W’s and H” list and reach your own conclusion.