Advertising Age reports that The Parents’ Television Council (PTC) is wagging quite the stern finger at broadcast networks for undermining marriage, they say, by making affairs look much more interesting. Networks show sex between married couples as “boring, burdensome or nonexistent, while depicting extramarital sex as positive,” according to the PTC. “[Prime-time] verbal references to nonmarital sex outnumber references to sex in marriage nearly 3 to 1, and scenes implying sex between unmarried partners outnumbered similar scenes between married couples 4 to 1.”

Sure: Shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lipstick Jungle, and Sex and the City certainly have their philandering plot lines, even if they end up with Carrie ending up with Mr. Big. Sunday’s episode of Mad Men showed Don Draper having ho-hum coitus with his wife, while sultry, unmarried Joan Holloway had anything but. And let’s not even get into the implications of Swingtown. Of course, in fairness to writers — TV and otherwise — a happy marriage makes a happy couple … but maybe not so great a story. (At least once the reality-wedding show ends.) But still: have we come so far that it is no longer risqué enough to merely say “Sex Sells,” but that “Forbidden Sex Sells”? And does it not just sell, but also, you know, drive us to seduce the pool boy?

More factoids from the study:

• Of all networks, ABC had the most references to marital sex, but many of them were negative
• In 46 hours of programming, NBC contained only one reference to marital sex, but 11 references to nonmarital sex and one reference to adultery
• NBC had as many depictions of adults having sex with minors as scenes implying sex between married partners
• Fox broadcast only one reference to marital sex in 24.5 hours of programming, but 18 references to nonmarital sex and 5 references to adultery
• References to incest, pedophilia, partner swapping, prostitution, threesomes, transsexuals/transvestites, bestiality and necrophilia combined outnumbered references to sex within marriage on NBC by a ratio of 27 to 1.
• The PTC had 19,239,764 people volunteer to watch all the TV required to gather these statistics.

My word. Can anyone think of some positive — and interesting — examples of small-screen marriage?