Parents Television Council president Tim Winter is calling the Disney and Fox merger a “Pandora’s Box of vexing concerns for parents and families” and has urged federal regulatory agencies “to make a thorough and careful review to ensure that the unique needs of children and families, and indeed the public overall, are prioritized over the corporate interests.”
In a statement released Thursday, Winter said that media conglomerates “have trended towards” explicit content that “delves into the explicit soft-core porn territory” and that “a Disney-Fox merger would be no different.”
He added that the merger will allow Disney to extend from cable and satellite to newer forms of digital distribution, which will “bring Disney’s Mickey Mouse and FX’s ‘American Horror Story’ together under one roof where kids will inevitably have access to both the innocent programs meant for them and the extremely graphic and grotesque TV shows that are not.”
A recent PTC study found that children can easily access adult content on streaming platforms, despite parental controls, which the PTC calls “lax or non-existent.”
The PTC was founded in 1995 as a non-partisan education organization to advocate for responsible programming that would ensure “children are not constantly assaulted by sex, violence and profanity on television and in other media.”
Disney announced a deal on Thursday to acquire much of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion in stock.