June 14, 2011

Deseret News | Salt Lake Tribune | Washington Post
The show “promotes a brand that we just cannot support,” says Mark Willes, chief executive officer of Deseret Media Companies, the parent company of both KSL and the Deseret News. “We would be helping to build a brand that stands for pornography. For us, that’s just untenable. We would never accept an ad from The Playboy Club, just as we don’t accept ads for alcohol or gambling.” (KSL also refuses to air “Saturday Night Live.” ) Salt Lake Tribune TV critic Scott D. Pierce calls the rival media outlet’s move predictable and hypocritical.

I have actually seen “The Playboy Club” pilot. It’s not lascivious or lewd. Essentially, it’s a crime drama set in the early 1960s. The characters either work at or belong to the Playboy Club in Chicago.

There’s no nudity. The bunny costumes are of the period – meaning they’re considerably more conservative than a lot of the dresses that a lot of actresses wear in a lot of other NBC shows.

“The Playboy Club” is clearly not for kids. But KSL airs plenty of shows that aren’t for kids.

I can say without hesitation that every episode of “Law & Order: SVU” is more “adult” than the pilot of “The Playboy Club.” And KSL has aired almost 300 episodes of that show.

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From 1999 to 2011, Jim Romenesko maintained the Romenesko page for the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based non-profit school for journalists. Poynter hired him in August…
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