A Message About "Warrior Queen"

A number of PBS stations around the country made the decision not to air ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's Warrior Queen because of its graphic content. We were not made aware of details regarding the extent of the graphic content until we had already begun to promote the program. We did include a week's notice to viewers and members who receive our Monday morning e-mail of programming highlights. (If you would like to receive that, you can sign up here). In addition, we ran a crawl at the open of Masterpiece Theatre on that evening of Sunday, October 12. We attempted to inform the television listing services of our decision to not air the program so their records could be accurate. There are times, however, when the listings are not always reflective of late changes.

The graphic nature of this program exceeded anything we've seen come from Masterpiece Theatre. There are numerous battle scenes throughout the program including intense fighting with swords, stabbing, graphic throat slashing, beheading and showcasing the head, dead bodies, and blood on living and deceased individuals and objects. In addition, a violent scuffle results in Boudica being gagged, strapped to bars and whipped and her two daughters tied down to torture racks and graphically raped for an extended period by numerous Roman soldiers. The quality of the drama was not enhanced by this excessive level of violence.

Our viewing community places great trust in KVIE's programming decisions. Typically, when a program contains strong language and adult situations in drama or controversial topics and difficult scenes in documentary or public affairs programming, our practice has been to air the program at the appropriate time of day and with viewer notification. In this rare case we determined that the violence depicted in "Warrior Queen" was so excessive and graphic that even with a viewer warning it would have been unexpected by most fans of Masterpiece Theatre. If we had aired the program we believe many of our viewers and members would have been extremely disappointed and upset with our decision to do so.

KVIE's practice over decades has been to not pre-empt programs and to air unedited versions of programs whenever possible. It is a practice that will continue. This exception was based solely on the extreme nature of the content of "Warrior Queen."