Daily Wire’s Bentkey has landed on the Parents Television Council’s (PTC’s) annual Nice list, while HBO and Meta are on the group’s Naughty list for “targeting youth” with content that is often overtly and explicitly sexual and graphic.
“In a screen saturated world, children, teens, and their parents have a lot to navigate,” Melissa Henson, PTC vice president told TVNewsCheck. “Meta and HBO aren’t making this any easier for families by targeting youth with explicit sexual and other harmful content.”
“Our Naughty & Nice List seeks to highlight some of the companies that prioritize children and families, and those who prioritize profit over child safety,” she added. “We are grateful to highlight AppleTV+ and Bentkey for offering more family entertainment. These companies serve as models that the entertainment business can emulate.”
Meta, HBO Make PTC’s Naughty List, AppleTV+, Bentkey On Nice Listhttps://t.co/wABNOOWDVv @TVNewsCheck pic.twitter.com/7dn1CNcLRi
— Parents Television and Media Council (@ThePTC) December 8, 2023
The Daily Wire launched Bentkey earlier this year which offers children programming free of woke indoctrination, sexual content, politics and more. It follows companies like Angel Studios, Pure Flix, and the Great American Family network to offer faith-based and family-friendly programming, something that is getting harder and harder for families to find.
In the PTC “Families Need Not Subscribe” 2023 report, the group said “every major streaming platform has substantially failed to deliver content for families – the one audience segment that would most guarantee their success.”
The group analyzed the popular streaming services to see which ones offered the “best opportunity for family viewing” and found AppleTV+ offered “the largest number of TV-G rated original programming. Surveys indicate families want to watch TV together, and AppleTV+ is giving families more options than most streaming platforms, which heavily produce and distribute TV-MA-rated programming,” the report noted.
However HBO “led the charge towards marketing explicit, adult content to children and teens, introducing the sexually explicit ‘The Idol’ to viewers this past summer, quietly adding ‘Naked Attraction’ featuring uncensored fully naked contestants, and extending teen-targeted ‘Euphoria’ for another season of drugs and depravity,” the report added
“PTC research has found that HBO’s streaming platform Max has mediocre parental controls, enabling children to access to the aforementioned programs and more of the most explicit streaming content on the market,” the report continued.
Meta — the parent company of Instagram and Facebook — also made the report because, according to the FTC, the social media group “continues to be revealed by media outlets, whistleblowers and lawsuits as fueling child sexual exploitation, providing a platform for pedophiles, and enabling sexually explicit and other harmful content that targets teens, especially teen girls.”
Related: The Daily Wire Releases New Kids App, Bentkey, With Full Slate In Surprise Drop