NEW YORK, June 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – MTV has canned a highly explicit TV show about a group of young teens that staggered to the end of its first and only season after major advertisers backed out due to accusations of child pornography.
“Skins,” a remake of a successful British program, ran into trouble only days after it first aired in January. The New York Times revealed that the sex-saturated content of the show, which involved teens as young as 15 with no previous acting experience, was feared by cable executives to amount to a breach of federal child pornography laws.
The show was labeled by the Parents Television Council as the “most dangerous program that has ever been foisted on your children.” While the program was marketed to adults with a TV-MA rating, according to the Nielsen Company, over a third of the 3.3 million who viewed the first episode were younger than 18.
After the first episode aired, top advertising sponsors including Schick, Taco Bell, GM, Wrigley, Subway and H&R Block all pulled their ads, and either condemned the show or said it violated company policies.
The National Post notes that the British version of “Skins,” which received no comparable backlash in that country, has just finished its fifth season.