The Parents Television and Media Council, which has criticized Netflix’s animated Big Mouth for sexualized content involving child characters, is no fan of animated spinoff Human Resources, either. Rather than asking Netflix not to run it, though, it is instead advising parents they may want to block it using parental controls.

PTC points out that while Human Resources does not “revolve around” adolescent characters, it features some of the same “hormone monster” characters and content PTC says contains “disturbing, sexualizing references to children,” for example one character that says: “I mean, I’m perfectly satisfied getting children to touch their privates.”

Also: PTC Asking Justice to Investigate Netflix Programming

In a revamped corporate employee policy published last month, Netflix made it clear that pushing the edge artistically is part of its mission statement.

“As employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values,” the policy states. “Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

That policy update applies to all content, but followed by several months the expressed unhappiness of some employees over the Dave Chappelle special The Closer.

PTC has long advocated for what its members argue is “responsible” entertainment when children are in the audience. ■

In this period of extraordinary low unemployment, the supposedly ascendant "gig economy" is not all it seems to be.

In fact, "contingent and alternative employment arrangements" have remained amazingly level during the two decades since the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began compiling statistics on temporary and contract workers, according to a new analysis of that data.

Altogether, about 22 million people work on a "gig" basis, the BLS said. The new report, issued earlier this month, found that the total number of gig workers has changed very slightly in the past 20 years. They constituted 9.9% of total U.S. employment in 1995; 10.7% in 2005 and 10.1% in 2017 (see chart). Independent contractors represented the largest group within the gig labor force: 6.7% in 1995; 7.4% in 2005 and 6.9% last year.

Although "gig" jobs are often generalized as freelance projects, or new-economy opportunities such as driving for Uber or Lyft, the BLS categories also include on-call workers or people brought in from temporary-help agencies to supplement permanent staffs or for seasonal staffing. But the BLS report conceded that the definition of gig jobs is vague, and hence its data may not accurately reflect the full labor situation.

"The concept and measurement of contingent work hinges both on the temporary nature of a job and on workers' perception of their job security," according to the BLS summary. "Some workers have been in jobs for a short time and do not expect these jobs to last. Others have been in jobs for many years yet still sense that their continued employment is tenuous."

Frustratingly, the current BLS gig jobs report does not break out industries or categories for such work; neither does it delve into whether gigs are a second source of income for people employed full-time elsewhere. The BLS said it expects to gather and reveal more data later this year about the gig job marketplace.

The BLS study has been challenged by outside analysts and other recent reports. For example, renowned analyst Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in her 2018 "Internet Trends" report last month, predicted that the gig workforce would climb 26% this year over 2017, adding 7 million people to the gig pool.

An Edelman Intelligence analysis late last year, commissioned by Upwork and the Freelancers Union, concluded that 57.3 million Americans -- 36% of the U.S. workforce -- are freelancing.

Separately, a Treasury Department study last year, using administrative tax records, estimated that gig work represented less than 1% of the economy, but a Federal Reserve Board report put gig employment at about 30%, according to published summaries.

Predictably, millennials represent the largest pool of gig workers. Still other data showed that minority workers are a large share of the ill-defined gig workforce.

What It Means to Media/Technology Providers

Beyond the confusion about what these conflicting analyses mean, employers should be interpreting the role of gigs in both their job planning and (for media companies) their market outlook. Gig workers may be less dependable as potential customers if their chosen lifestyle keeps them on the move -- less likely to put down roots and subscribe to wired services.

Separately, as potential employees, they pose challenges for training and other requirements of "regular" workers. The category of "contractors" itself poses secondary employment factors since, for example, operators of wired and wireless systems have long relied on third parties to build and maintain infrastructure. Now those companies may also be relying on gig workers to handle or at least supplement their workforces.

The chattering class (many of us relegated to the gig world ourselves) quickly pounced on the BLS study as an indicator of either (a) the over-hype about gig jobs or (b) the looming changes in the American job scene. These observations add to the confusion about how important gig jobs will be.

Ultimately, the BLS report and its eventual update represent snapshots worth watching to identify where employees are coming from, and how to leverage the (slightly) shifting options in labor trends to match the (often) shifting needs to keep operations running.

Kevin Lord has been named EVP of human resources for Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and their digital outlets.

He assumes that post Jan. 16.

Most recently Lord was SVP and chief human resources officer for Tegna (formerly Ganett).

Before Tegna, Lord was EVP of human resources for NBC News, and prior to that was with former NBC parent GE.

"Kevin is an extremely well-rounded executive who recognizes the essential role that Human Resources plays, having held high profile positions at major media companies and GE," said network co-presidents Jack Abernethy and Bill Shine. "His long and impressive track record in this arena will be a valuable addition to our management team, and we look forward to him implementing key programs reflecting his core vision for employees.”

Discovery Communications has expanded its employee leave benefits, extending paid parental leave to 12 weeks and offering the same benefit to employees who act as family caregivers.

The new benefits will kick in on Jan. 1, 2017, Discovery said, adding that they place the programmer "among a small number of companies choosing to enhance paid family leave in the U.S., where the absence of national regulation has made America the only industrialized nation in the world without requirements for the benefit."

Across the U.S., only 13 percent of people have access to paid family leave, according to parental leave advocacy group MomsRising. Moreover, among new mothers who work, 33 percent take no formal leave at all, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

“These paid family leave benefits further our commitment to support employees both at work and at home, where we want to ensure they have the flexibility to spend the time they need -- and deserve -- with their families during important periods of transition,” said Adria Alpert Romm, chief human resources and global diversity officer. “This new policy marks a proud moment for Discovery and is something we hope will retain and attract great talent for many years to come."

Related: 7 Ways to Make Your Company a 'Best Place to Work'

The paid parental leave benefit applies to mothers and fathers in cases of birth, adoption or foster care placement and stretches what is currently four weeks of leave paid at 100% to 12 weeks. In some cases, employees can further extend their parental leave by combining it with short-term disability leave and up to two weeks of vacation.

In terms of maternity leave, that means the total benefit now maxes out at 20-22 consecutive weeks, while total paternity leave now maxes out at 14 consecutive weeks.

The new paid caregiver leave benefit expands the definition of "family" beyond children, spouses and parents to qualified domestic partners, siblings, parents-in-law and grandparents, Discovery said.

Employees who serve as caregivers to a qualified family member in need -- "whether aging, ill or otherwise impacted by a serious health condition," Discovery said -- will now also qualify for 12 weeks of paid leave. With an option to add up to two weeks of vacation time, caregiver leave will max out at 14 consecutive weeks.

The new parental and caregiver leave policy allows employees to take their weeks consecutively or divide them up as needed over the course of a 12-month period.

Discovery said the new leave policy joins other "family-focused benefits" already available to its more than 3,000 U.S. employees, including an adoption and surrogacy assistance program offering up to $10,000 reimbursement for adoption- and surrogacy-related expenses; an on-site childcare facility at corporate headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.; and onsite wellness centers for employees and their dependents across a number of U.S. office locations.

RELATED:Recruiting Tips for TV's Digital Age

As the pay TV industry continues its digital transformation, the makeup of the workforce required to keep it going is taxing recruiting efforts, throwing programmers and distributors into a talent competition that rivals anything on reality TV.

In this competition, job-seekers are the judges and employers are the contestants vying to be given a chance. Social-media specialists, cross-platform content producers, app developers, network engineers, IT security pros, data jockeys and other in-demand candidates are in command of the buzzers in the big black chairs, and pay TV recruiters hit the stage with their acts:

Wanted:Content developer and TV fan passionate about our brand who can create short-form video, post it online, tweet it, put it on Facebook and then parse who’s engaging with it and why.

Wanted:Cloud architect and TV fan passionate about our brand who can create infrastructure required to support future TV Everywhere strategy and interface with Big Data system to parse who’s engaging with TVE apps and why.

TV businesses have an overwhelming need for an elusive candidate who has blended skills across multiple platforms in an environment where the traditional lines between users and IT, production and distribution, even digital and analog platforms, have blurred. Pay TV companies are no longer simply recruiting against each other, but against an insatiable demand for digital and tech pros across all industries, particularly the digital companies they’re increasingly competing against for eyeballs.

Networks and multichannel distributors are trying to fill the same digital and technology roles, requiring the same scarce skills, as a group of companies many simply refer to as “the Googles” — Google, Apple, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon are the most commonly cited — the über-aspirational digital companies for millennials coming into the marketplace.

While pay TV’s digital transformation has been swift and impressive to industry insiders, job seekers from outside the pay TV ecosphere are harder to convince.

“There’s a perception, whether true or not, that we aren’t as far along as we should be,” Renee Hauch, executive vice president of media and entertainment industry recruiter Carlsen Resources, said. “And that has affected the recruiting.”

RELATED:"The Pay in Pay TV," a look at compensation trends in the pay TV industry excerpted from CTHRA's 2015 Compensation Surveys of MSOs and programmers

Turner Sports found that an internship program originally created to give recent college grads, including student-athletes, a break into the sports media business yielded the kind of candidates it needed for wider digital initiatives.

The company designed the program in 2010 as part of its year-round partnership with the NCAA, selecting 10 recent college graduates to cover Turner’s NCAA portfolio. Six years later, the program draws 1,600 applicants, and the current class of 10 interns is working not just on content, but across product management, editorial, video production and marketing, “all with a digital focus,” Turner Sports executive vice president and general manager Matt Hong said.

“While we created the program principally as a way to help individuals break into the sports industry, something that has traditionally been tough to do, it also serves as a beneficial tool to Turner Sports to have a pool of incredible talent from which to fill permanent roles at the end of the internship year,” Hong said. About half of those who complete the program stay on with Turner Sports at the end.

Since then, Turner Sports has created a similar program to support its social media eff orts for its National Basketball Association, NCAA men’s basketball tournament, Major League Baseball, PGA and ELeague assets.

GOING OUTSIDE

“The pay TV industry is pretty small, and people maintain tight-knit relationships,” Chris Barksdale, Scripps’s vice president of human resources, said. “When you start trying to expand beyond our industry, it’s really hard to find someone with the right amount of industry knowledge and a fresh perspective.”

Add to that the tech credentials: Barksdale said Scripps is looking for cloud architects, cybersecurity specialists for “a wholly reimagined team, starting from scratch, to run and build our security going forward,” and developers. “Put anything in front of that, and we need it,” he said, citing content, apps and software developers as examples.

“Our challenge is, we have two voices,” Barksdale said. “We have strong linear TV brands, and that is really helpful in recruiting when we find people who are passionate about those. But we also have a second voice, around technology, and that is a whole brand that I am laser-focused on creating a voice for.”

He’s crafting that voice to counter any notion that an evolving traditional-TV company can’t play in the same sandbox with the Googles: “We play with cool new technologies, and we’re innovative and competitive with Silicon Valley, with great, fulfilling jobs.”

SIDEBAR: Embracing Digital to Fill Digital Jobs

As Scripps Networks Interactive copes with the fact that it’s as much a digital/technology company as a pay TV programmer, its human resources department has one overarching mission: Connect with the right candidate at the right time.

“iOS app developers are not hanging out on LinkedIn,” Chris Barksdale, SNI’s vice president of human resources, said. “You have to go find them in a place where they’re comfortable, like a forum for a technology they trust, and speak to them there. Recruiting for digital talent is a very different proposition now, vs. five to eight years ago.”

In its quest to connect with that talent, Scripps’s HR team is embracing digital tools to fill digital jobs — “technology that connects us to the places that our target candidates are and where we have a chance to define our voice,” Barksdale said.

When you’re recruiting against Google and Netflix, you can’t lose any time. Scripps HR has streamlined the way it recruits candidates, tracks applicants and fills positions by overhauling its backend HR system and giving staff mobile front-end tools.

“All of our stuff is in one system, within the same infrastructure, and it’s all current,” Barksdale said. “I can use it on my phone, my iPad, my laptop, and on each I can do all the things I need to do as an HR manager.”

With a new infrastructure and mobility in place, Barksdale is moving on to phase two: bolting on additional digital tools to maximize recruiters’ reach and efficiency.

“As jobs become harder to fill and we shift the way we look for talent, we need our recruiters to spend more time sourcing candidates and less time on tasks,” Barksdale said.

Pivot has announced the 10-episode second season of the docu-series, Human Resources, in light of the season one finale tonight at 10 p.m.

The show centers around the workplace at TerraCycle, one of fastest growing green businesses, which takes anything and everything waste and turns it into something else.

With Tom Szaky as 32-year-old entrepreneur and the young, quirky staff, the series encaptures a variety of social situations, ranging from awkward interactions to relatable dramas and much more.

"The series is the perfect demonstration of Pivot’s mission to serve up entertaining originals that organically spark a conversation about ways to affect positive social change,” said Belisa Balaban, EVP, Original Programming.

Pivot and TerraCycle joined with Recycle Across America (RAA) to promote the campaign, Recycle Right!, which was inspired by the series. The campaign works on educating people on proper recycling instruction and how important it is to the environmental footprint.

The series is a Pivot Original Series in connection with Left/Right, with executive producers Jeff Skoll and Christy Spitzer for Pivot. For Left/Right, Ken Druckerman, Banks Tarver, and Anneka Jones serve as executive producers.

For a look into the first season, click here.