THE LEFT LANE
Formerly raunchy Dutch TV cleaning up

Advertiser Staff and News Services

It isn't likely that the Netherlands has become prudish overnight. After all, this is the country that gave the world the voyeuristic "Big Brother" program, a land where prostitution is legal.

But lately, bare-skin broadcasting has fallen off to practically nothing.

A year ago, at least three commercial channels showed "erotic" programming in the late evening. Now there's only one.

Even the teen-oriented public broadcaster BNN has stopped running its sex-education series, "Neuken Doe Je Zo," which, charitably translated, means "This is How You Do the Nasty."

Wim Bekkers, director of the Netherlands' Institute for Classifying Audiovisual Media, the Dutch industry group responsible for giving parental-guidance ratings to television and films, suggests that sex programs are losing their audience to the Internet.

"You can find anything there, all kinds of sex, including things that can't ever be shown on television, like bestiality," he said.

Site lets you find a date or adopt a dog

Actually, it's a matchmaking site for people with pets.

Honolulu is not included on the list of cities (yet), but check out www.kissykat.com "where people who love their pets find love," and maybe you'll find the purr-fect partner.

You can also search the site for a homeless pet to adopt, answer a poll about whether you let your pet share your bed, and find answers to questions like what to do if your dog stinks. How's that for puppy love?

Now you can learn Hawaiian from a CD

There's no companion book for the $29.95 eight-CD set. It's designed to teach pronunciation, sentence formation and conversation just by listening. For information or to order, see www.topics-ent.com.