Playboy Plans to Educate Parents on Content Blocking

From XBiz:

By Michael Hayes

LOS ANGELES — In an effort to help parents protect their children from viewing adult content, Playboy CEO Christie Hefner will launch an educational campaign aimed at teaching parents how to use content-control devices and ratings guidelines.

“What’s important to us is that people understand that we are supporting our programming, but also supporting a person’s right to choose not to see our programming,” said Jim Griffiths, president of Playboy Entertainment Group.

TakeParentalControl.org, a site already launched by Playboy, covers the basics for parents. Video clips and step-by-step instructions educate adults on how to block content across various mediums, from television, to Internet, to wireless mobile devices.

But the site is only the beginning of a broader campaign that Playboy intends to launch in both English and Spanish across a number of cable operators nationwide.

In addition to ads, Hefner will place herself at the center of the effort, according to Griffiths, putting together a coalition of broadcasters, technology companies and lawmakers for the cause.

While some might speculate that Playboy’s decision might be motivated by a desire to get out ahead of increased regulation — the Senate’s recent decision to increase indecency fines tenfold, for example — the company stresses that protecting kids is simply the right thing to do.

“This has always been a passion of ours,” Griffiths said. “The current political environment is what it is, but we think this is a product that works today and works five or 10 years from now, regardless of the political environment.”

News of Playboy’s decision came as no surprise to Joan Irvine, executive director of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection.

“Playboy is an ASACP sponsor, so we’re not surprised to see them take the lead on helping parents protect kids,” Irvine told XBIZ. “We’re especially glad that their campaign includes protecting children online. There’s so much filtering technology now available to parents… but many parents are still not utilizing these tools. We hear this consistently from government, child protection organizations, mainstream and adult companies. Hopefully Playboy’s initiative will help change that, and we look forward to working with them on these issues.”

The tagline for the campaign is: “Parental control. Our right. Our responsibility.”