The comedy series "The Real O'Neals"—despite reportedly receiving low ratings and drawing heavy criticism for offending people of faith—has just been renewed by ABC network for a second season.
Nielsen ratings revealed that the April 19 episode of the show only generated 2.9 million viewers and was rated 0.8/6 among viewers aged 18 to 49 year old. The numbers dropped significantly compared to the show's previous episode, which received a rating of 1.8/6 among 6.3 million viewers aged 18 to 49 years old.
The Christian watchdog group Parents Television Council (PTC) cannot understand why the show was still renewed, given its low ratings.
PTC President Tim Winter says the show, which is executive produced by gay activist Dan Savage, should not have been given a PG rating in the first place because of its explicit content. "The amount of explicit content is surprising," Winter tells The Christian Post. "They rate their movies like 'Cinderella' PG, and they're rating this show PG, and I don't know how you could possibly ever put [them] in the same category, but they do."
One of the episodes that has gotten Winter really upset was when a school vice principal made light of a child molestation scandal and even said that he will be "sleeping with all the other boys" at the school.
"Why should there ever be jokes about paedophilia on television, regardless of its rating?" Winter says of the episode. "At what point in time do we as a nation want to make jokes and laugh at the idea of a school vice principal having sex with children of the school? I hope the answer is never."
The PTC earlier conducted a study concerning "The Real O'Neals," and it discovered that adult content is shown every 43 seconds. Morever, around 83 percent of this adult content is sexual. Majority of the sexual innuendos found in the show concern the 16-year-old gay main character named Kenny.
