Broadcast television characters are almost three times as likely to have sex with a child, an animal or a corpse than with a spouse, a study released Tuesday by a clean- up-TV group said.

''We're a media advocacy group, not a marriage advocacy group, but when we did the study, the data was really shocking to us,'' said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council (PTC).

The study, Happily Never After, was based on the monitoring of 207.5 hours of prime-time shows on the five major broadcast networks last fall. It concluded that television programming ``seems to be actively seeking to undermine marriage by portraying it in a negative light.''

References to sex outside marriage outnumbered those to marital sex by a margin of 3 to 1, the study said, and references to pedophilia, beastiality, necrophilia, voyeurism and other ''kinky'' erotic practices were 2.7 times more frequent than those to sex in marriage.

On some networks the ratios were even more lopsided -- as high as 27 to 1 on NBC -- and were even more frequent during earlier hours when children are likeliest to be watching, the study said.

''Everybody's having sex on TV except married couples,'' Winter sighed during a telephone conference call with reporters.

When married TV couples do have sex, according to the study, it's not a pretty sight, citing a wisecrack by a character on the now-departed ABC sitcom Carpoolers who says he'd rather have sex with a mailbox than his wife. (''On top of being a very hurtful comment, I think that's a federal crime,'' primly replies their marriage counselor.)

''Carpoolers, BigShots, Boston Legal, a lot of those programs really did tend to portray marriages as hell on Earth,'' said Melissa Henson, the PTC's research director and author of Happily NeverAfter. ``Whereas the non-marital relationships were portrayed very positively.''

Network executives hate talking about the PTC, which routinely encourages its million-plus members to complain to the Federal Communications Commission about the amount of sex and violence on television. And Tuesday was no exception. ''We will decline comment on the study,'' replied a CBS spokesman in the most loquacious response from a network on the study.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.