Won't someone think of the children? No, seriously.

My wife and I are really careful about what our children watch on television. We avoid anything that is too scary or disturbing for our five-year-old daughter or our two-year-old son. This is a lot more challenging than it sounds. Both network and cable TV is filled with ads that are completely inappropriate for anyone under 52, much less a kindergartener and a toddler.

Tonight we had a close call with nightmareland when I left the Monday Night Football game on in the living room while I went in the kitchen. Usually we never leave the room without turning the channel to the Food Network (the only channel we've found that doesn't show scary commercials) but the football game was really exciting and I hadn't wanted to miss any of it. I was in the kitchen playing with my son when I realized that Ellie was in the living room and I didn't know what was being shown.

My wife walked in just in time to see that they were showing a commercial for a horror movie called Pandorum. Fortunately, Ellie's back was to the TV and she didn't see any of it, but that's not the point. Remember, this was at 7pm Pacific Time on ESPN. Watch these two versions (I'm not sure which one of these was playing tonight) and tell me that they're not completely inappropriate for kids:

And this isn't even the worst of it. A few months ago there was a commercial for a movie called "The Strangers" that gave me the heebie-jeebies so badly that I couldn't stand to watch it.

So here's my question: are we a couple of Maude Flanders-types who stand up in the town meeting and yell, "won't someone think of the children" or are we right that commercials have gotten way too scary?

Comments

[Michael Sippey]

No, you're totally right. We were watching the niner game this weekend, and the kids were smart enough to look away at the horror flick ads...

[moe hong]

another reason why my kid doesn't watch tv!

although i'm sure she'd love to.

we watch movies together all the time. she loves hitchcock, although i think the birds would be too much for her at 18 months :)

[Georgia Choate]

We got rid of our cable 3 years ago. Great move! It immediately saved us 60 a month, and we get everything we'd like and then some between Netflix and hulu.com. I just finished a Miami Vice marathon. (Kinda glad that's over.) Not sure about football access. It would probably mean you'd rely on others to record it for you?

One of the best perks that I didn't even think of was getting rid of commercials! I don't even have to know what's being produced. And my kids don't know what awesome toys they're missing ;-)

[John Baker]

Just ran an experiment. Ran trailer one in front of my five-year-old, then ran "Wizard of Oz" scene where fiery Wizard machine announces views of "Great and Powerful Wizard." Guess which he was more scared of.