D'oh! A Venezuelan TV channel has yanked The Simpsons off the air because it may be inappropriate for children. Taking its place: Baywatch Hawaii.
Televen TV station spokeswoman Elba Guillen said Monday that the decision to hand over the daily 11 a.m. time slot came after the National Telecommunications Commission received complaints from viewers. "It had to be taken off," Guillen said. "They consider it to be a series that isn't appropriate for that time because it isn't appropriate for children."
The regulatory agency didn't specify which elements of the program were deemed offensive, but said showing the animated cartoon series at that hour could violate national regulations prohibiting "messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents." Guillen said it is up to Televen's management whether The Simpsons may be shown at another time of day.
Baywatch, which features bikini-clad bombshells and musclebound hunks working as lifeguards on the Hawaiian coast, has been running in the 11 a.m. slot since Friday. The station has not received any complaints about that show, General Manager German Perez Nahim told the Venezuelan newspaper Ultimas Noticias in its Friday editions. Perez was out of the office Monday and could not be reached for comment.
"We are hoping it will continue to have a good rating, because The Simpsons worked very well -- so much so that it had the highest levels of viewership for that morning timetable in the history of the channel," Perez said.
It is not always wise to cross the cartoon’s creators. George Bush Sr and his wife Barbara became frequent and unwilling characters on the show after the former President said that Americans should strive to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. The creators hit back by having the Simpsons watch the 1992 speech, with Bart objecting that they were, in fact, a lot like the Waltons – “we’re praying for the end of the Depression, too”.President Chávez, Venezuela’s leader, has not pronounced on the Simpsons controversy, but on past form he does not respond well to mockery: he made his irritation known last week with a photo from the Reuters news agency in which he appeared in front of two black circles, making him look as if he were wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. State-controlled media attacked the picture as an act of “media terrorism”.
