Child Friendly Home Screen

[Kudlatz]

Hi, 

Can someone from Sky explain why we cannot set up a child friendly Home Screen?

No banners, promos, access to trailers etc of 12+ programmes.

NB: This is not a request re. parental settings - we have those in place.

 This is a request for Sky to respect us as customers and parents who wish to ensure our children (and ourselves) are not subjected to distasteful, distressing, horrifying, violent & sexist images on a daily basis. We should have the ability to modify & set restrictions on the content before it is streamed into our own homes.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Kudlatz wrote:

Hi, 

Can someone from Sky explain why we cannot set up a child friendly Home Screen?

Unfortunately, you are highly unlikely to get a response from Sky by posting on this forum, which is primarily other customers.

Whilst Sky may browse the forum to determine trends of issues, or potential popular features requests by customers, they almost certainly won't comment on individual requests and any justifications or plans as to whether they will be included.

[martswain]

 "distasteful, distressing, horrifying, violent & sexist images"

I've never seen anything that remotely comes into any of the above categories on the home screen.

[TimmyBGood]

@martswain 

Scrolling along the 'New to Sky Cinema' rail brings up a fair number, for example, as does 'Documentaries you may have missed'

The thumbnail images are less bad these days, but the 'hero image' (Sky's phrase for the graphic in the top right when an item is highlighted) can be distinctly unpleasant: Bone Lake, Toxic Avenger, The Gentleman, Until Dawn etc

[Kudlatz]

Thanks for your reply.  I guess it's a personal choice of the viewer and their sensibilities.  

For us as a family we'd prefer not to see images that we find distressing even if the majority don't find the images distasteful, distressing, horrifying, violent & sexist.  We should be able to curate our Home Screen or set age appropriate home screens as we can on Netflix, Prime etc.

Currently we object to the following:-

28 Years Later, Bone Lake, Toxic Avenger & The Joker are just a few examples which are horrifying to an 8 year old.  I'd rather not see the images either as find them grotesque. Also these are 15+ rated but have no parental lock to prevent viewing the trailers.

Sinners  (Men looking 'cool' with guns) - promoting violence  - not a positive male message for a young boy.

Naked Gun (remake) - distasteful & sexist -"Why does that lady have hands all over her bum?" This is a mildly sexist image... certainly no woman I've ever known has posed this way in real life.

Borderline - woman tied to a chair with a man holding a knife behind his back - sexist & violent.

A banner for True Crime - this ticks all the boxes of we'd rather not see and definitely don't want our son to see.

On the banner 20 Documentaries You May Have Missed 11 relate to murder, drugs and grooming - this is distasteful & disturbing to us, and does not relate to our viewing preferences at all.

And scrolling through the Home Screen this morning there are 100+ images which we find distasteful and young children find disturbing.  Some images appear repeatedly as the show is being promoted.  (This is particularly challenging around Halloween for obvious reasons). Within the images on display today there are people looking extremely aggressive, frightened, under duress.  The backgrounds are dark, distorted, dystopian.  There are a lot with guns, knives, war scenes. I lost count of how many images had the words 'death, dead, murder, killer' appear 30+ times.

[Angel_Aka]

@Kudlatz 

I fully support your standpoint on this. 
I find advertising of all kinds to be abhorrent and do my best to removal all trace of it from our TV. It was part of the reason we stopped using Sky's hardware and OS. It was just becoming too much of an advertising platform which they control, with too little customisation to keep sensitive content away from younger & neuro-diverse family members. 
Since switching to using NOW TV for Sky content on our own streaming devices, we've found it much easier to control and prevent issues such as you describe. 

[Dazzasky]

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@Kudlatz wrote:

Thanks for your reply.  I guess it's a personal choice of the viewer and their sensibilities.  

For us as a family we'd prefer not to see images that we find distressing even if the majority don't find the images distasteful, distressing, horrifying, violent & sexist.  We should be able to curate our Home Screen or set age appropriate home screens as we can on Netflix, Prime etc.

Currently we object to the following:-

28 Years Later, Bone Lake, Toxic Avenger & The Joker are just a few examples which are horrifying to an 8 year old.  I'd rather not see the images either as find them grotesque. Also these are 15+ rated but have no parental lock to prevent viewing the trailers.

Sinners  (Men looking 'cool' with guns) - promoting violence  - not a positive male message for a young boy.

Naked Gun (remake) - distasteful & sexist -"Why does that lady have hands all over her bum?" This is a mildly sexist image... certainly no woman I've ever known has posed this way in real life.

Borderline - woman tied to a chair with a man holding a knife behind his back - sexist & violent.

A banner for True Crime - this ticks all the boxes of we'd rather not see and definitely don't want our son to see.

On the banner 20 Documentaries You May Have Missed 11 relate to murder, drugs and grooming - this is distasteful & disturbing to us, and does not relate to our viewing preferences at all.

And scrolling through the Home Screen this morning there are 100+ images which we find distasteful and young children find disturbing.  Some images appear repeatedly as the show is being promoted.  (This is particularly challenging around Halloween for obvious reasons). Within the images on display today there are people looking extremely aggressive, frightened, under duress.  The backgrounds are dark, distorted, dystopian.  There are a lot with guns, knives, war scenes. I lost count of how many images had the words 'death, dead, murder, killer' appear 30+ times.

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My advice to you would be to cancel your tv package, I don't think Sky will change anything on the back of a single post also everything will be in line within the guidelines from Ofcom. You will be better off viewing freeview from your tv aerial. @Kudlatz 

[Kudlatz]

Does anyone have Sky Q ? It seems a child profile can be set up on Sky Q but would like to know if this is the case... Thanks in advance for any advice.

Otherwise I think we'll be cancelling Sky TV

[Kudlatz]

Thanks @Angel_Aka that's really helpful

to know.

[AndySCFC]

OMG!!! And this the reason why 40 yrs ago my car had a manual telling me how to adjust the tappets. Now my manual tells me not to drink the battery acid. This is the reason why my office restaurant had a sign up saying may contain meat by the oxtail soup. This is why countless American TV programmes have an announcement at the end saying don't worry snowflakes the fictional tv programme you just watched wasn't real.  I suggest you cancel all Tv lock the doors, close the curtains and hope for the best 

[TimmyBGood]

@AndySCFC 

The post is in reference to children viewing the Home Screen because there are images displayed which wouldn't be permitted in pre-watershed content itself, which is an anomaly: the Broadcasting Code pre-dates graphical user interface access to EPGs.

[xenon81]

Everything that appears on the home screen is designed to be Ofcom compliant, some images for darker series may look a little sinister at worst, but it will be nothing more than would feature in a pre-watershed trailer for the programme and should not be terrifying or distressing for a child, let alone an adult. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@xenon81 wrote:

it will be nothing more than would feature in a pre-watershed trailer for the programme and should not be terrifying or distressing for a child, let alone an adult. 

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Many of the film titles listed above couldn't be advertised pre-watershed.  I'd refer you to the hero image for Bone Lake for example, as something where alleged Ofcom compliance (and yes, I know that's what Sky claims) is distinctly questionable: that's absolutely intended to be 'terrifying and distressing'.