The Parents Television and Media Council has filed for bankruptcy, ending its 30-year run as a media watchdog that has fought to remove sex, violence and profanity from the airwaves.
The organization filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on Oct. 3 with assets of $92,000 and liabilities of $285,000. During its heyday in the early 2000s, the organization raised as much as $6.6 million a year in donations, but by 2023 that number had dropped to $1.6 million.
“It’s a tough time for nonprofits,” said Tim Winter, who retired as the organization’s president three years ago. “The mission has never been more important…I’m sad. I’m disappointed. I hope the mission continues to find new light.”
SFGate first reported the bankruptcy.
The Parents Television Council, founded in 1995 by conservative commentator L. Brent Bozell III, is best known for flooding the Federal Communications Commission with complaints of indecency. In 2003, it accounted for 99.8% of them.
At one point, the group had 1.4 million members. When Janet Jackson’s nipples were momentarily exposed during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, members filed more than 65,000 complaints with the FCC and were fined a record $550,000.
The group also filed thousands of complaints about short-lived expletives, such as when Bono used the “f-word” at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards. In 2004, the group targeted the short-lived ABC show “Life As We Know It,” calling it “sex-filled.”
PTC took a hard look at orgies, drug use, and violence on prime-time television. The group lamented the decline of the broadcast’s “Family Hour,” noting that the 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. time slot had been taken over by risqué shows such as “Melrose Place” and “Friends.” Researchers tallied vulgar expressions such as “donkey,” “bastard,” and “son of a bitch,” as well as instances of premarital and extramarital sex.
In 1998, the group ran newspaper ads pressuring advertisers to stop supporting televised “filth.” The ad, which featured Steve Allen, a former “Tonight Show” host and the group’s “chairman emeritus,” warned that “TV is leading kids down the moral sewer.”
The organization repeatedly targeted adult cartoons such as “Family Guy” and “American Dad.” The show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, has had a long-standing feud with the group, calling them “terrible people” and likening their complaints to “receiving hate mail from Hitler.”
Over the years, the PTC has expanded its authority from broadcast to cable TV and streaming, issuing warnings about Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and HBO’s “Euphoria,” calling them “child-themed pornography.” The group has regularly criticized TV’s self-regulatory content rating system for being too lenient on racy programming.
The group added “media” to its title in 2021, recognizing the proliferation of distribution channels that provide illicit influence, and has since also considered TikTok, artificial intelligence and smartphone bans in public schools.
All in all, PTC appears to be in a losing battle. The group recently lamented that sex scenes in Hollywood are more explicit than ever before, warning parents that this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner “Anora” contains graphic sex and glorifies prostitution.
“I keep telling myself, it can’t get any worse, but it does. Now it’s normal to use name-calling,” Bozell said in 2001.
But McFarlane and Winter, the group’s chairman, were able to forge an unlikely friendship. The LA Times reported in 2019 that McFarlane had come to see PTC as “healthy and necessary” to coexist with his own show.
“Seth was the first person to contact me this morning and tell me how depressed he was,” Winter told Variety on Thursday.
Updated comment from Winter.
