Chapter 8 Sexual Content of Television Commercials Watched by Early

When Justin Timberlake ripped Janet Jackson’s bodice, exposing her breast during the MTV-produced Super Bowl half-time show in 2004, parents, ed-ucators, and network executives entered into a heated debate about appro-priate content for national network television. Comments typically ranged from outrage to a simple shrug; the concern generally centered on younger viewers who were unwittingly exposed to the daring stunt. The incident also focused attention on the program’s advertising as being crass, over-sexualized, and inappropriate for young audiences (Smith & Simon, 2004). Fallout from this media “event’ ’ highlights how little we know about the content of television that children consume—and that we know even less about the content of embedded commercials in those programs. This chap-ter attempts to close that gap by focusing on one specific age group—early adolescents—and the sexual content of the commercials that run during their most-watched shows. LITERATURE REVIEW Sex in the Media Sexual images in the media have long been a concern of mass media re-searchers. Much of the early research concentrated on the content analysis of sex on prime-time television in an attempt to paint an accurate picture of the type and amount of sexual content portrayed during the most heavily watched time slot. Spanning the second half of the 1970s, these analyses established that sex was primarily portrayed through reference and innuendo (Franzblau