Would you be shocked if you turned on a network TV show and saw somebody nude?
Well, brace yourself, it could happen.
American television is becoming more sexually explicit and nude scenes may be inevitable.
Lisa Gibbons has that story.
American families spend an average of 7 hours and 12 minutes each day watching television.
On any given week there will be as many as 200 sexually graphic scenes, some pretty explicit.
Now I know what all those stories and calls were talking about.
In a given year your family is exposed to 10,000 incidents of sexually suggestive material
over broadcast television coming into your living room.
So we decided to bring our cameras into the living room of a family who lives in the suburbs
of Houston, Texas.
This is the Nadine family.
Robbie is 13, Michelle 16, and their parents, Robert and Anne, are concerned.
If you compare television today to television 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I mean, we really
are shocked.
How about the whole question of morality?
For instance, on daytime television, 95% of the couples that we see together in a love
scene are not married to each other.
Michelle, is that wrong to you?
Yeah, it's wrong, you know, but it happens, you know.
What happens on American TV is mild by Japanese and European standards.
Many countries have had nudity and much heavier sexual content on their television for years.
I'm not saying that that's a bad form of entertainment, but I think on the public airways it shouldn't
be.
I mean, if you're not too, you know, tired, could they be doing it again?
Many people predict it's just a matter of time before the American TV nudity ban will
fall.
We pushed the envelope, TV limits, I mean, I'm convinced that this show will be the first
show on television to have some sort of nudity.
I'm convinced.
What happened to your conscience?
I went on vacation.
What is acceptable on American TV is constantly changing.
I don't really understand why certain things are allowed and certain things aren't, but
I guess they have their reasons.
If there's something to do sexually in the script, I always look at it from an actor's
point of view, is it justified?
And to me this is all very justified.
How will Americans accept nudity in their living rooms?
It doesn't really bother me, I guess, but it's like I want to protect my little brother
and he probably doesn't want me seeing nudity on males, you know.
Well there is already a precedent.
In 1973 the Public Broadcast Service aired Steam Bath.
I'm glad they saw it.
If they saw it to see my bum, and that was the reason that they watched it, they ended
up having a little bit of a, we snuck a little culture in there on them.
We snuck a little quality in there on them.
Good.
There was such a controversy that only 18 of the 234 PBS stations broadcast the show,
but those few tallied some of the highest ratings in PBS history.
Lisa Gibbons, Entertainment Tonight.
Stay with us when we come back.
Harry Belafonte is named Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
Tomorrow, can comedian Don Rickles make it as a 4 by 6 foot chunk of carpet?
Cute, I knew it how to be chocolate.
And on Friday, steamy Morgan Fairchild tells us that good looks aren't enough to get ahead,
and she shares her secret for success.
The golden taste of your golden salt has broken from its golden tub.
It's the golden soft you love in a brand new shape.
Stick it with the taste you love.
It's great with the meals you make, makes it easy when you cook off baked.
It's the golden soft you love, so for goodness sake, stay with the taste you love.
The golden soft you love has a brand new shape.
Stay with the taste you love.
And now, it's time to play On the Spot's Instant Cash Call-In, sponsored in part by the Oregonian.
We're on the phone now with Chris Germano of Southwest Portland, and Chris, you're going
to have 20 seconds to answer these three questions, and we'll give you $50 for each correct answer.
Here's your first question.
William Webster was just nominated as chief of what agency?
CIA.
That's correct.
Who lives with Ernie on Sesame Street?
Bert.
Correct.
And what star of White Christmas passed away yesterday?
Danny K.
That's right.
You've got yourself $150 with 12 seconds to spare.
All right.
Congratulations, Chris.
You're going to be in our drawing on March 6th, that's Friday of this week, for the trip
to London.
Congratulations.
Thank you very much.
We're going to have another Instant Cash Call-In, and that'll be coming up tomorrow night when
we return at our regular time, at 6.30 p.m.
And we'll be back with more action right after this.
Hello, I'd like to talk to Larry Blackmore.
Every weekday this month, there's $150 in the Oregonian and a chance for a trip to London.
Hello, yes, you're on the spot.
This month, the Instant Cash Call-In questions for On the Spot is taken from the Oregonian.
Be sure you're not stuck for an answer.
Subscribe now.
See all the changes we've made to make the newspaper better.
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It was George Washington.
You win.
What's more, you can get one month of the Oregonian free when you pay for five.
So call now.
There's always been something rewarding about reading.
There's more good news from one of those folks celebrating a wedding anniversary.
Singer Harry Belafonte today was named Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Organization,
UNICEF.
The second American to hold the post, the first was the late Danny Kay.
In his new role, Belafonte will travel the world spreading the UNICEF message and promoting
the well-being of children everywhere.
I believe the work that UNICEF is doing and can do and will be doing is extremely strategic
and very, very important.
Throughout his show business career, Belafonte has been active on behalf of causes he believes
in, from human rights to world peace.
He has been a major force in USA for Africa, helping to organize We Are the World and hands
across America.
Today, he paid tribute to Danny Kay, the entertainer who helped teach the world about UNICEF.
But Danny left behind something that I think that many of us have learned from and will
continue to learn from.
And there's some poetry to the fact that knowing him as well as I did know him, I can kind
of step in here and lend of myself and use my influences and energies to carry on much
of the very good work that he started.
Belafonte will begin his duties this month when he travels to Dakar, Senegal to head
an artist symposium for African children.
Most people buy or rent a videocassette as an alternative to what they would normally
watch on television.
But today in our video preview, Eric Burns has a cassette that contains the highlights
of everyday television complete with commercials.
Eric?
That's a pretty good cassette, Mary, so let me save it for later.
First, the worst.
Remember Shanghai Surprise, the awful movie from last year starring Sean Penn and Madonna?
Well, it's out on video this week.
How would you like it if I didn't waste much time talking about it?
I'd like that.
Okay, you've got it.
This is Frank Capra's classic vision of Shangri-La Lost Horizon, a triumph not only of Capra's
art but of the film Restorer's art.
You see, this version of Lost Horizon contains 20 minutes of soundtrack and 13 and a half
minutes of picture that have been missing for years.
Some of the scenes which best conveyed James Hilton's, the author, his original intent
and also Capra's intent of pacifism, of an alternative society where the strife of nationalism
was, you know, you could escape from.
That was all cut out.
Hi, I'm Gary Owen.
And Gary's the host of TV's Greatest Bits, a video retrospective of the year 1964.
That was the year of Hullabaloo, Ozzie and Harriet, Get Out of There, Gary, The Andy
Griffith Show, and Petticoat Junction, among others.
Get Out of There, Gary.
Petticoat Junction.
All right, now explain what you think the appeal of 1964 television is to people in
1987.
I think the fact that we were living in a time that is nowhere near as stressful as
it is today.
Let Miles Nervine in new carry-along capsules help you feel calm.
It's formulated to help ease that feeling of nervous tension.
Well, let's just say that even the stress looks less stressful in retrospect.
Those are some wonderful old commercials on that video.
In fact, in many ways, they recapture the era better than the clips from the TV shows.
John and Mary.
Where's that Nervine?
When we come back, a classic television star, Dick Van Dyke, tells us that he once studied
how to repair televisions.
Have you seen what's happening at Fred Meyer?
It's the peek-a-boo baby sale with low prices on many things for your little one.
Like cozy bedding ensembles now 25% off.
Cute new outfits for baby are a special purchase at $4.96 and $7.96.
Curity gauze and pre-fold cloth diapers are $10.96.
Day and night diapers, $11.96, all with a mail-in rebate.
Don't miss the peek-a-boo baby sale now through March 10th.
Fred Meyer for families who love selection, low prices, and one-stop shopping.
I'm Bob Lamphere, inviting you to the biggest Honda Power Equipment parking lot sale we've
ever had.
It's so big, it's at two locations, Beaverton Honda and Gladstone Honda.
This weekend only, we're offering you savings on all our Honda Power Equipment.
Buy both the Moore and Taylor combination for only $40 per month and no down payment.
We will be happy to deliver.
Call an Oregon Chief hot dog on us at Gladstone Honda or Beaverton Honda.
Of all the movies you can see this year, see Platoon, nominated for eight Academy Awards,
including Best Picture of the Year.
See the movie All America is talking about.
Platoon, rated R. Hoosiers, nominated for two Academy Awards.
People Magazine calls Hoosiers the sleeper of the year.
Miss Hoosiers, the movie All America is cheering for.
Rated PG, now playing at a theater near you.
Celebrating a birthday today, actress Kay Lenz is 34, singer Bobby Womack, 43, actress
Paula Prentice, 48, and singer Barbara McNair is also 48.
In today's People Post scripts, in Washington D.C., temperatures dipped into the 20s as
actors Martin Sheen, Brian Dennehy, and Dennis Quaid spent the night on the streets of the
nation's capital.
They were there to encourage passage of a bill now before Congress designed to help
the homeless.
And Alexander Gudinoff, the Russian ballet dancer who defected in 1979, became a U.S.
citizen today in New York and discussed his plans for celebrating.
Have some champagne.
We move on to Dick Van Dyke, who came to Hollywood and studied to be a TV repairman.
Luckily for millions of fans, Van Dyke had a career change.
He stopped working on televisions and began appearing on them as he relates in this memory.
It's a place in our imagination and in our minds that I think we have to feel exists
somewhere, some glamorous, wonderful place where The Wizard of Oz was made and all those
kinds of things.
Hollywood is Hollywood to me.
It's best personified in my memory as a 21-year-old when I came to California and I was living
in a small house with my nightclub partner in Venice.
And in order to go to work, our little cocktail lounge, I had to pass the gates of MGM, which
are probably the most impressive of any of the studios in town.
And I thought then, how does one ever get inside those doors and pass that guard at
that gate?
How does one enter that magic world of movies?
Not dreaming that I would ever, ever have the chance.
I was taking some kind of correspondence course in television repair at the time.
But the day came many, many years later when I did actually drive my car through those
gates.
They said, good morning, Mr. Van Dyke.
I said, that's it.
That's Hollywood.
That's it for us.
Coming up tomorrow, we have comedian Don Rickles.
He plays a carpet in a new commercial.
And I understand that, believe it or not, Mary, he actually has a few awful things to
say about us.
Oh, well, if he didn't insult us, I mean, we wouldn't be part of the group or something.
Anyway, that'll be tomorrow.
Today, we're going to leave you with Harry Belafonte singing Vincent, a folk music hit
from the 70s.
We'll see you tomorrow.
Take care, everybody.
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the memories I can't forget.
Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs.
And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs.
And I wonder if you know that I never understood.
Next on Channel 8's PM Magazine, the Phantom gets wined and dined at Silvia's Italian restaurant.
Join him for a marvelous meal and dinner theater. Then stay tuned for a great Wednesday night on NBC, only on Channel 8.
I never thought you would.