COMMENTARY: Help for coping with the ineffective TV-rating system

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Frederica Mathewes-Green is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is the author of”Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy”(HarperCollins), and a frequent contributor to Christianity Today magazine.) UNDATED _ Deep in the secret handbook of marketing strategy there must be an axiom: If you give […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Frederica Mathewes-Green is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is the author of”Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy”(HarperCollins), and a frequent contributor to Christianity Today magazine.)

UNDATED _ Deep in the secret handbook of marketing strategy there must be an axiom: If you give the people what they don’t want, maybe they’ll take it anyway and shut up and leave you alone.


The jury is still out on whether that will happen with the new rating system offered by the TV industry. The hope that the system would be received with grateful thanks has been dashed, and three months after inauguration parental grumbling continues.

The main complaint is that the system is age-based, not content based; it tells viewers what age group the show is appropriate for, but not what elements in the show (sex, violence, language) prompt that rating. Testy industry executives protest that this is, in fact, content-based rating; they examine the content and stick a label on the program. Dissatisfied parents want to know what the content is, too.

The Media Research Center has monitored 150 hours of programming under the new system, and have concluded the system is inconsistent and ineffective. The”PG”rating was assigned to 61 percent of the shows, embracing both racy and innocuous fare. Kathryn Montgomery, president of the center, described the”PG”rating as”a black-hole category … into which just about everything goes.” Even locating the new ratings is a challenge. The emblem appears for just 15 seconds at the start of a show, in the corner of the screen. A recent study found that 54 percent of respondents hadn’t even noticed the new ratings.

Will the V-chip save the day? This electronic device, available next year, will enable parents to program their televisions to automatically screen out shows that carry certain ratings. The V-chip will save them from having to eliminate one show at a time based on that fleeting symbol, but will leave them still dependent on the industry’s assessment of the shows.

This may ultimately cause a boomerang effect, making television worse, not better. With the shield of the V-chip, producers may feel freer to pile more garbage into the”adult”shows, dragging overall quality down. If one four-letter word earns an”M”rating _ for mature audiences _ why stop at one? Why not 17, plus gobbets of blood and frontal nudity? Wouldn’t that boost ratings?

And _ tell the truth now _ how many of you parents know how to program your VCR? Do you really think you’ll take time to figure out the V-chip? Of course, some conscientious parents will. But parents who find new technology too intimidating, and parents who don’t supervise their kids at all, will find their children exposed to more provocative fare. The gap will widen between parents who struggle to tame the TV monster, and parents who just don’t care.

Caring parents are, for the most part, just asking for fair warning. They want to know the content of shows in advance, and an age-code doesn’t tell them enough. Some kids are more mature than others, even at the same age, even in the same family.


Big-Daddy thinking leads people to leap swiftly to the conclusion:”There oughta be a law”forcing TV producers to do this or that. But not every situation calls for a law. Private solutions sometimes do just as good a job.

There are at least four publications that can give parents a helping hand in predicting what’s suitable, and what’s not. But in every case, the same root problem remains: only the industry knows the specific contents of a specific show right up until the moment of broadcast. These guides offer perspective, but that’s the best they can do until producers decide to allow a glimpse into what’s coming on.”The Family Guide to Prime Time Television”is a yearly handbook put out by the Los Angeles-based Parents Television Council. The publication, based on exhaustive research by its parent organization, the Media Research Center, promises”a brief background and thematic summary of every entertainment television show currently appearing on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, UPN, and WB.”Each show is rated with a stoplight symbol: green means”family friendly,”red warns of content”unsuitable for children,”and yellow indicates shows that”may be inappropriate for youngsters.”Their web site is at http://www.mediaresearch.org.”Family Entertainment Review,”a monthly magazine based in Hollywood, tackles a broader array of offerings, with reviews of movies, TV, music, software and web sites. Editor Charlie Gilreath is dedicated to overcoming the time gap and provides parents with content information on shows as they air. The present form of the publication, he says, is transitional:”As telephone, TV, and computer meld in the future, you’ll be able to point and click on a corner of the TV screen and pull down our review.”Their web site is at http://www.familyentertainment.net.”The AFA Journal”is a monthly publication of the American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Miss. This publication takes an aggressive and thorough approach, analyzing specific episodes according to many different kinds of content (including, for example, a count of how many times profanity occurs). Readers are urged to contact show sponsors to protest offending material. Regular boycotts are organized.”We’re very activist-oriented,”says editor Randall Murphree. The publication is not only negative, but also praises good shows and invites readers to encourage those sponsors. their web site is at http://www.afa.net.”Plugged In”is a monthly newsletter published by the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Focus on the Family. It gives brief content descriptions of movies, TV, and rock music, both secular and Christian, and each month one TV show is examined in depth. Reviewer Steve Isaacs says his goal is to equip parents with information so they can make their own decisions.”We don’t like to tell people, `You should or shouldn’t do this.’ We want to give the positive and negative and leave it there.”A web site is under construction.

These resources won’t solve all a parent’s TV woes, but they give some assistance. And in the current TV jungle, parents need all the help they can get.

MJP END GREEN

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