Audiences Prefer Family-Friendly Movies with No Foul Language

There is a common misconception in our popular culture that sex, violence, and obscenity usually sell, but nearly eighty years of experience and research prove that this is not true.

For example, for nearly 30 years, when Hollywood was run according to the Motion Picture Code of Decency, enforced by the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Film Office, the movie industry saw an unprecedented economic boom. That fiscal prosperity only began to wane when Christian churches pulled away from Hollywood in the 1960s and movies reached increasingly new levels of immorality featuring more and more graphic sex, violence, and obscene language.

Toward the end of this Golden Age of Hollywood, the movie industry was selling 9.43 tickets per person in the United States and Canada, but now sells only about 4.1 tickets per person.

Also, nearly two decades of research by Movieguide, a non-profit family guide to movies and entertainment supported by Christian donors and general subscriptions, shows that family friendly movies with no graphic sex, violence, and obscene language earn more than two to six times as much money at the box office, on average, as movies with such graphic content.

That’s exactly what Movieguide tells Hollywood’s top executives each year in Movieguide’s Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry (which is also highlighted at the Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala held each February and attended by many of those executives).

Ironically, a study released by the Parents Television Council in 2008 revealed that the amount of foul language on primetime network TV has skyrocketed since 1998. Meanwhile, a study of foul language in G, PG, and PG-13 movies revolving around teenagers by three Brigham Young University professors shows that the 1980s movies they studied averaged 35 obscenities or profanities per movie, but decreased to 25 per movie in the 1990s and 16 per movie in the current decade, in the wake of Movieguide ‘s annual study, which began in 1991.

This is no surprise to Movieguide , which reported a 2006 poll by The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg that most teenagers are offended by depictions of foul language and sex in movies and television.

Teenagers are the most frequent moviegoers, according to annual statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America.

Their preference for movies with little or no foul language is reflected in annual statistics from Movieguide’s Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry.

According to those statistics, in the last five years, movies with no foul language averaged nearly $51.48 million at the box office, but movies with 26 or more obscenities or profanities averaged less than $24.20 million.

That’s more than twice as much money!

Is it any wonder, then, that the movie industry, despite the decline in movie attendance in the past 40 years since the end of the movie production code of decency, still seems to be economically sound, while the major television networks have noticed a significant decrease in viewers in the last 10 to 15 years?

Clearly, the depiction of foul language and obscenity in movies and television does not usually sell. Neither do graphic depictions of sex, nudity, and extreme violence.

In fact, clean family movies and clean action thrillers remain the most financially successful types of movies, not only at the North American box office, but also internationally and on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The movie studios and their stockholders seem to be listening to this well-established fact. When will the major television networks in the United States?