In what some analysts attributed to a decline in violent TV dramas, the percentage of primetime shows featuring "sexual content" rose to 68 percent in the 1999-2000 season from 56 percent two years earlier, according to a study released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Ten percent of the shows "depicted or strongly suggested" sexual intercourse, versus 7 percent in the earlier study. Kaiser Foundation vice president Victoria Rideout noted in a Washington Post interview that "the good news is that certain kinds of shows are much more likely to include safer-sex references." Asked about the study's findings, Robert Wehling of Procter & Gamble told the online edition of Broadcasting and Cable Tuesday: "We have guidelines as far as what we will and won't sponsor. The guidelines say that we don't want to associate with excessive or gratuitous sex ... and it's getting harder and harder and harder to tell which shows we will be in."

Source: Studio Briefing