Big Brother may be watching...

[Guest tv1966]

Talking to my brother last night ( who knows NOTHING about TV other than how to turn the set on BTW ), he was telling me that he was chatting, well he thought he was chatting to some girl last night on one of those adult/matchmaking sites. After about 10 minutes of small talk the person he was chatting with told him they were "not looking for love" but rather they were an employee of "Gray Television" and the prupose of them being on that website was they were seeing if any of their employees have profiles on the site they were on because if they did, that would be a violation of Gray's "Morals Clause" thats in place when they sign their contracts to be on the air and they would be fired as a result.

 

Of course, after that the conversation ended.

 

At first when he told me this I thought he was joking but looking back at some of the stations I heard about in the past, it wouldn't be past them to pull a stunt like this.

 

On a similar subject, what does a tv station do when they get a phone call from someone saying they saw one of their employees on a sex site? At a strip bar? Buying a six pack at a 7-11? Etc....Do they really look into this or they just file it with the other nutty calls?

 

I work in radio and often we would get calls about our air staff doing such stuff, but management pretty much blows these people off.

[tampabaynews 0]

Well, I'm sure they would be alarmed if they saw a member on a sex site, I could understand why they would be upset. The actions of a station talent represents the station directly, so they don't want an anchor doing something that causes the entire station to look bad.

 

As for going to bars, it's not the stations' business. But I'm sure they look into what some of the anchors do on their spare time anyway.

[jestbiteme 13]

I don't get how signing up on a legit site, say match.com or eharmony.com is a violation of a morals clause. Sure, if it was an all out sex site with scary secret cameras and whatever, that would be. But a dating site? Come on.

[ib-td 1]

This situation depends on how the "morals" clause is worded. Signing up on a dating site may not in and of itself be a violation. However, soliciting for sex on the web through that same site might be a violation. It would seem reasonable to assume that people have a right to date, especially if both parties give consent. In the above senario, the "employee" might have been testing to see how far the conversation went.

 

To have a profile listed on a website seems to be a bit restrictive. To say an employee may not have a profile which has offensive texts, say my organ is x inches, etc., could be the violation the employee mentioned. Again, it depends on how the clause is worded.

 

In any case, should an employee be terminated for such an offense, best thing to do is to consult with an employment law attorney.

[Guest tv1966]

I don't get how signing up on a legit site, say match.com or eharmony.com is a violation of a morals clause. Sure, if it was an all out sex site with scary secret cameras and whatever, that would be. But a dating site? Come on.

 

E Harmony I believe is tied in with Focus On the Family as I have seen their founder on TV in the past talking to James Dobson. Of course being close with such a group they do not allow ads from homosexuals and lesbians.

 

Like most national spots E Harmony has rules in place in which shows they want their ads to run on and dont want any part of. Not sure about TV but with radio there have been a few times in the past they have sent us memos "requesting" that their ads not run on shows where the announcer is gay.

 

Over the years we have received many such memos from so many different companies about how they don't want their ads to air duing certain shows. Most are the same ( Rush Limbaugh, Opie & Anthony, Stern, Lovelines, Bob & Tom, John Boy & Billy, etc...) but I have to say E Harmony's request is the most unusal one we've had.