Satellites to bring sex films to U.K. TV?

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 18

Satellites to bring sex films to U.K. TV?

NZPA-PA London Hard-core pornographic films could be on British television screens in two years time, broadcasters were warned recently. They were told the films could be beamed by satellite from European networks, as there was no way legally to prevent them from reaching British screens.

Colin Shaw, director of the Broadcasting Standards Council, the body set up by the Government to safeguard standards of taste and decency on British television said more programme output was likely to rely on sex movies as satellite TV competition increased and channels strove to keep viewers. Even now the French channel Canal Plus screens a sex film every Saturday night, which can be received in Britain if viewers have the right satellite aerial and a decorder to unscramble the pictures.

Meanwhile there is a blacklist of movies that cannot be shown by the 8.8. C. or 1.T.V., headed by four films — Marlon Brando’s “Last Tango In

Paris,” “Straw Dogs,” starring Susan George, “The Exorcist” and Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.”

But “Last Tango” has already been seen on subscription channels in Britain screened by cable television networks. And Sky Television has shown the Monty Python film on its subscription channel. Mr Shaw told 2000 delegates at the Edinburgh International Television Festival that within two years there would be high quality explicit porno programmes available to British viewers through foreign satellite channels.

Such films were becoming increasingly available in Europe.

“We were staggered. They are very high quality sex programmes, shown in the evenings, and have already spread from Scandinavia to France, Germany and Spain.”

He said there could be a very real problem that when “the chips were down and the money ran out,” satellite operators would turn to pornographic movies to keep audiences.