Sex and Television: How America went from 'I Love Lucy' to 'Playboy Club'

SALT LAKE CITY — In a bright-pink tank top, a light-haired girl crosses the student parking lot of West Beverly Hills High School. She walks past a Bentley and a blue mini-cooper before she stops suddenly as she spots a friend nervously entering his SUV.

"Oh my (goodness), there's Ethan," she says.

She checks out her reflection in a nearby car window, and from the way she fusses with her hair, it's clear she wants to impress him. Smiling broadly, she begins walking toward the teenager's car. Ethan, however, is in no position to say hello. His attention is focused on another teenage girl, who is performing a sex act on him inside the SUV.

The scene is from an episode of the redux "90210," airing Monday nights during the first hour of prime time on the CW network.

Sex-scenes, even sleeping in the same bed, were once verboten on any hour of network television, but they are now everywhere, even during prime time, when many children are watching. That will only increase this fall with new shows like ABC's "Charlie's Angels" retrofit (summed up by one critic as "beautiful women, skimpy costumes, skimpier plots") and "Pan Am" (about 1960s flight attendants and described by one critic as "far sexier than NBC's more provocatively titled 'The Playboy Club'") Fox's "The New Girl" (a teacher gets dumped by her live-in boyfriend and moves in with three unruly and raunchy guys who teach her about life and love), NBC's "Free Agents" (about professional colleagues who have a one-night stand and try to keep their relationship professional despite constant sexual tension between them) and of course the show with the most provocative title, "The Playboy Club" (set in – where else? – a Playboy club).

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that the number of sex scenes on TV has nearly doubled from 1998 to 2005. Similarly, a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics said, "more than 75 percent of prime-time programs contain sexual content." Studies indicate that the more teens watch sexual content on TV, the more likely they are to be involved in risky behavior.

This is one reason why so many parents are concerned.

"It's one thing to discuss sex and violence on television within the larger context of the culture wars ... but it's a another thing altogether to be faced with these issues while you're sitting in front of the TV with your child," said then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in a 2005 press release addressing the increase of sexual content on television.

Many parents agree. TV watch-dog groups like the Parents Television Council boast 1.5 million members and are growing stronger and more aggressive, launching recent campaigns against programs like MTV's "Skins" and NBC's "The Playboy Club."

"The FCC's broadcast decency law says you can't be indecent before 10 o' clock at night," said Tim Winter, president of the PTC. "After 10 p.m., you can be, but before 10 p.m., you are not allowed to be indecent. As long as that's the law we want it enforced."

Of course, defining what qualifies as indecent can be a difficult task. The FCC's current definition is any "language or material (on broadcast television) that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities."

The problem with the definition? "Contemporary community standards for indecency are hard to define," said NYU law professor Amy Adler, an expert on obscenity law. "I think our culture has come to tolerate sexual imagery in mainstream places that we would have considered pornographic some 30 years ago, and the standard continually evolves."

Whether indecent or not, there is no denying the amount of sexual content on television has increased.