Mind your language

As one of the Monty Python troupe, he continually courted controversy, but as an erudite and culturally sensitive travel presenter, Michael Palin shocked viewers when he looked into the camera on a crowded station and spat out the F-word. The outburst, during a gruelling train journey across Africa, was screened in the early evening and made Palin one of a series of unlikely programme-makers to be censured by the broadcasting watchdog last week.

The BBC's long-established Crimewatch UK team was also criticised, for reconstructing sexual assaults and re-enacting shockingly violent crimes ahead of the 9pm watershed, before which it is assumed children could be watching unsupervised. As well as attacking Palin and Crimewatch, the Broadcasting Standards Commission also expressed concerns over inappropriate pre-watershed content in pop videos, sci-fi films and charity fundraising programmes.

With the expansion of digital television and competition for ratings at unprecedented levels, concerns are growing over the blurring of the significance of the traditional 9pm cut-off. Paul Bolt, the director of the BSC, says television viewers should now receive the same type of warnings that come with computer games, videos and DVDs, and at cinemas. He thinks the classifications would be especially valuable in the case of dramas and documentaries. "Most television dramas are shot as films nowadays," he says. "I don't see any particular reasons why they could not be classified in the same way."

Mr Bolt thinks there is scope for improvement in the way programmes are previewed. The BSC does not want to impose the classifications as a "Big Brother system" but hopes that broadcasters will introduce such changes themselves, Bolt says. "If you think of what types of things children consume, video games are classified," he says. "I think television will gradually get sucked into that kind of expectation. I think it's in its interests to do so."

The criticism of Palin followed the screening last October of the documentary Sahara with Michael Palin: Destination Timbuktu. In a mitigating statement to the BSC, the BBC said: "[Palin] was very travel-worn (and obviously exasperated), and it was in this frame of mind that he responded to the question of a man on the platform, replying that he hadn't 'a fucking clue'." But the commission ruled that the language was "unacceptable" for a programme shown at 7pm.

It also upheld a complaint against Crimewatch UK for showing, before the watershed, a reconstruction of a sexual assault on a young girl at knifepoint and images of a "criminal" preparing an attack with a disc-cutter. The programme also included accounts of mugging, child abuse, rape and robbery of the elderly. Seven viewers complained that the content was too violent and disturbing to be shown between 8pm and 9pm. The BSC agreed that it had "exceeded acceptable boundaries for broadcast at this time".

The range of programming that has developed from the expansion of digital television has certainly contributed to confusion over what is suitable pre-watershed. A complaint was upheld against the Sci-Fi Channel for screening a film – Meet the Applegates – that contained swearing and other offensive language. The film highlighted the dangers of destroying the rainforest by depicting bugs metamorphosing into people in an attempt to save the planet by destroying the human race. But the BSC said that the film's "repeated use of language rated as severe" was unacceptable before the watershed.

Music television is another grey area. The recent video for Pink's hit "Just like a Pill" caused upset because of sexual activity in crowd scenes. But Channel 4 believed it fit to be shown at 6.30pm. The BSC censured the station, which showed the film on its T4 young people's entertainment slot, saying the contents of the video had "exceeded acceptable boundaries".

The finding echoed concerns voiced in a recent lecture by Jana Bennett, the director of television at the BBC, who said she had been shocked to find her eight-year-old child watching a video on one of the music channels of the female pop duo Tatu "kissing, kissing and kissing some more".

Bennett told a seminar for the National Family and Parenting Institute that broadcasters had "no excuse for using sexual content or bad language as a creative cop-out". She said that the BBC issued 3,000 warnings last year about the contents of programmes, but that, in a digital world, parents had also to "do their bit in setting boundaries". She said: "I think we all recognise that increasingly the watershed alone is not enough. We are in an age of great choice, and more family members, including children, are consuming media in isolation."