The TV Violence Proposal: Let’s Get Cynical : Television: Anything that gets the industry to look at what it delivers should be applauded. But The Plan is full of loopholes.

It’s Congress that’s aiming the .357.

On the grounds that introspection under the gun is better than no introspection at all, however, cheers are in order for anything that bullies the television industry into examining the impact of the programs it delivers to the public day after day.

So if the threat of stiffer congressional regulation is what prompted ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox to conceive a plan for parental advisories on violent content in entertainment programs--and it surely was--so be it.

Here’s the “two-part, two-year test plan” that top network executives announced at a Capitol Hill press conference Wednesday with Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, and congressional TV critics Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.):

Starting this fall, entertainment programs with violent content--plus the promos advertising them--will carry advisories alerting viewers to that fact, the main purpose being to allow parents to decide for themselves whether the material is suitable for their children. These advisories will appear preceding and during programs; each network will decide for itself when to use them.

Significantly, cartoons and news programs are excluded. Also significantly, the cable industry, except for Ted Turner’s TBS, has not signed on to the plan, nor have syndicators who sell first-run programs on a station-by-station basis.

In spite of these loopholes, the advisories are at least a step toward making television more peaceful.

But at this point, skepticism intercedes.

It’s human nature to seek simple solutions to complex questions, and the question of why violence is so prevalent in the United States is among the most complicated. The message of The Plan, whether intended or not, is that TV violence not only causes real violence but also is a primary cause--a hypothesis that conveniently skirts other societal issues that may also be responsible.

Simon and Markey are obviously sincere in their stated desire to make TV a more serene environment. Politicians being politicians, however, many of their congressional colleagues are self-servingly crowding onto their bandwagon only because TV violence has become such a hot issue.

If they are really earnest about making this a safer society, why aren’t just as many of these courageous public servants calling for a ban on handguns? Why aren’t just as many calling for a ban on tobacco smoking, a killer whose body count makes TV look pacifistic by comparison?

Just the other day, cable-TV’s ever-hyperbolizing Turner told Markey’s House telecommunications subcommittee that the television executives approving violence on the air “are guilty of murder as far as I can see.” Graciously, he included himself among the murderers.

What Turner was alluding to was a body of research allegedly establishing a direct link between actual violence and depictions of violence on TV, the conclusion being that the small screen turns kids into perpetrators. Markey himself Wednesday cited frequently bandied-about figures from the American Psychological Society that the average child in the United States has watched 100,000 violent acts, including 8,000 murders, by the time he reaches age 11.

“Our concern is that there are 65 million children in this country,” anti-TV violence activist Terry Rakolta said recently, “and their electronic environment is saturated with violence.”

Yet the top 10 series watched by kids aged 2 to 11 in the season that just ended were all comedies, according to the A. C. Nielsen Co. Ditto for kids aged 12 to 17. If most kids are watching these relatively benign shows (“Full House,” “Blossom,” etc.), who are the ones being turned into criminals by TV?

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If the average 11-year-old has watched 100,000 acts of TV violence, moreover, he has arguably watched perhaps 10 times that number of acts of goodness via TV. “We imitate what we see on television,” Simon said Wednesday. Well, if TV does turn kids into its mental slaves, why is this not a kinder society instead of a more violent one?

“We’re not suggesting no violence on television,” Simon said. “What we are suggesting is that we shouldn’t glamorize violence.”

But which TV programs “glamorize” violence? At a recent congressional hearing on TV violence, a multiple murderer in Canada was said to have gone on his rampage only after watching an ABC-TV movie about mass killer Charles Starkweather. Yet only a deranged person could have seen the seedy Starkweather as heroic or glamorous, the same kind of nut who just as likely would imagine receiving a violent message from “The Cosby Show.”

Whatever value the violence advisories have, their impact will be limited as long as cable and the rest of the TV industry do not go along. “The majors of cable,” Simon said, hope to agree on “some kind of program” of their own prior to an industrywide meeting on TV violence Aug. 2 in Los Angeles.

The impact of the advisories also will be limited in homes where parents are not always present to make programming choices for their kids. Markey hopes to address that with his controversial plan for new TV sets to include computer chips that will allow parents to pre-program the zapping of violent programs.

Just what criteria will determine The Plan’s success or failure after two years was not addressed Wednesday.

As Markey noted, the television industry has a history of making positive changes under pressure, only to slip back into old ways once the glare of the congressional spotlight is removed.

In the movie “Grand Canyon,” a Hollywood producer of exploitative movies (played by Steve Martin) has a change of heart after being seriously wounded by an armed robber. “I can’t make these movies anymore,” he says. “I can’t make another piece of art that glorifies violence and bloodshed and brutality. . . . No more exploding bodies, exploding buildings, exploding anything. I’m going to make the world a better place.”

Months later, when a friend inquires about his previous flash of insight, the producer replies: “What? Oh, that. . . . That’s over. I must have been delirious for a few weeks there.”

Are the networks merely delirious now? After saying they were “reaffirming the proud network tradition” of responsibility, Howard Stringer, president of the CBS Broadcast Group, conceded that it was easy for outside observers to be cynical about all of this.

Indeed. Wednesday’s historic press conference announcing The Plan was aired live only on CNN. Among those not carrying it were ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.