The New TV Ratings Compromise: The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated from The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 1997
It's good news indeed that the television industry has agreed to revise its "TV Parental Guidelines" to mollify its critics. The original system, which, like the decades-old movie (MPAA) ratings, gave age guidelines but did not get specific about a program's content, had three major flaws: First, it was precisely the opposite of what parents overwhelmingly wanted. In five national surveys (including one I conducted with the National PTA), parents said they wanted information about the content of a program, not a recommendation about who should view it. Second, by not specifying whether the program contained sex, violence, or coarse language, the system did not give parents the information they needed to decide whether it was a program they should prevent their child from seeing. Third, research I conducted for the National Television Violence Study (and corroborated by others) shows that age-based, restrictive ratings lure children to the very programs we are trying to shield them from, but that content information is much less enticing.
The compromise rating system will add a variety of letters to the original age designations to alert parents to the specific content that was responsible for the rating. For most programs, which already can receive ratings of TV-G: General Audience, TV-PG: Parental Guidance Suggested, TV-14: Parents Strongly Cautioned, or TV-MA: Mature Audience Only, the upper three ratings may also be accompanied by a V for violent content, an L for crude language, an S for sexual content, and a D for sexual dialog or innuendo. For programs aimed at children, which now are classified as either TV-Y: For All Children, or TV-Y7: For Older Children, an FV may be added to the Y7 category to indicate that the program contains "fantasy violence."
The fact that we have a compromise is a great tribute to the many child advocacy groups, led by the National PTA, who worked tirelessly to bring about this change, to parents all around the country, who made their feelings known, and to members of the House and Senate, particularly Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who responded to the needs and desires of parents and kept the pressure on the television industry. The provision of the additional content information will undoubtedly be helpful to parents, who are simply asking for help in navigating the diverse and disturbing flood of images and ideas that enters their homes, unbidden, through their television. In this sense, the compromise is a major step forward.
The bad news is that the compromise rating system retains some unsavory features of the original system, based on the reluctance of the industry to give up on their age-based rating structure. First, the age guidelines ensure that the "forbidden fruit" effect will continue, and thereby make parents' jobs harder by adding to the allure of restricted programs. Second, the age-based structure makes it impossible to discern information about content that exists at more than one age-level within a program. Under the current plan, for example, if a program is rated TV14-L because it has "strong coarse language," but it also has "moderate violence" which would otherwise merit the PG level, the program will be designated simply as TV14-L. No mention will be made of the violent content. To do otherwise, it is argued, would be too complicated. But if the industry had agreed to adopt a simple content-based system, a program could easily be designated as having different levels of different contents, thereby allowing full disclosure of its controversial aspects.
Finally, the industry's insistence on euphemisms, rather than describing content clearly and accurately, is a major complicating factor. Rather than accepting three levels of sex, violence, and coarse language, as most advocacy groups had recommended, the industry insisted upon adding "D" for situations in which sex is talked about, but no sexual activity is shown. In addition, they balked at using the word "violence" to refer to the mayhem that goes on in many children's shows, such as "Power Rangers" or "The X-Men." Instead, they use the letters "FV" to refer to "fantasy violence" -- whether the violence is indeed of the impossible variety or whether it is quite realistic but simply performed by animated characters. In the case of both "D" and "FV," the change was insisted upon by the industry to reduce the possible loss of advertising revenue they expected the word "sex" on the one hand, or "violence" on the other, would cause.
The complication of the new system represents a challenge to the advocacy groups, who will need to work hard to make the system user-friendly for parents. It is important that the public be made aware that this complication was not due to unreasonableness on the part of the advocacy community, but rather was an effort on the part of the TV industry to preserve its profits.