TELEVISION : Caging the Beast, <i> Continued</i> : Are the networks serious about curbing violence? An upcoming meeting looms as a key test, as a wary Congress awaits action

Ever since Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) turned on a hotel television set in 1985 and saw a movie in which a body was being dismembered with a chain saw, he has been on a personal crusade to clean up violence on television. For several years he compiled mountains of research to give weight to his urgent message: that the alarming rise of violence in society can be directly linked to the rise of violence on television.

In December, 1990, Simon used his information to persuade lawmakers in Washington to pass what amounted to a challenge--signed into law by President George Bush--giving the TV industry three years to clean up its act, or else have the government step in and do it.

After 2 1/2 years of virtual silence, Hollywood is suddenly responding to what Simon says.

The top brass at CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox flew to Washington last month and announced that, beginning this fall, the networks will voluntarily attach parental-advisory labels to TV series and movies that contain what the networks deem to be a high level of violence.

And in two weeks, an unprecedented summit meeting of media minds will take place in Los Angeles when key members of the broadcast and cable TV industries sit down together in a daylong conference, organized by the National Council for Families & Television, or NCFT, to explore the effect of violent TV programming on society--especially children.

Coming in the wake of highly charged congressional hearings on TV violence--during which cable mogul Ted Turner bested even the harshest congressional critic by referring to himself and other TV programmers as murderers--and with the year-end deadline set by Simon’s bill only months away, the Aug. 2 conference has taken on nearly epic significance. The networks’ warning label has served only to focus greater attention on the meeting, since the tag is aimed at identifying violence, not reducing it, as the critics insist is necessary.

But conflicting expectations seem certain to undermine any chance of accord.

For Simon and other lawmakers who have been waiting for the industry to act since the law was passed in 1990, the conference represents the end of one phase in a battle against TV violence that has been waged in some form almost since the medium’s inception. Many express a desire to see some concrete plan of action emerge. For Hollywood, however, the conference is only a beginning step in defining the problem and the industry’s role in it.

“I’m concerned that an unfair burden may be placed on this conference by expecting to find the magic pill in one day,” said Bill Allen, president of MTM Television and vice chairman of the nonprofit NCFT. “This is the first time the entire TV industry will sit down in a room, a rather public room, and look for solutions to violence. Easy and facile solutions might not be the best ones.”

That attitude riles industry critics. “I’ve just lost all patience, and I think everybody else has too,” said Rep. John Bryant (D-Tex.). “I don’t know why everyone wants to spend the day in a group grope discussing a subject that’s obvious to everybody already.”

If there was ever an industry in need of a quick fix, this is it. Controversy over the effect of TV violence has snowballed through Capitol Hill with all the speed and momentum of an avalanche.

Although violence in news and sports is also of concern, the main assault has been on gratuitous, glorified mayhem in entertainment programming--TV movies, theatrical movies and reality-based crime series--that portray people using force to deal with crises. In the last eight months, the attacks have become relentless:

* In November, President-elect Clinton said in a TV Guide interview that he was “mortified” by some of what is shown on television and that Hollywood should take the lead in “deglamorizing mindless sex and violence.” A Times Mirror survey subsequently found that 80% of Americans believe TV violence is harmful to society, and 72% believe there is too much violence in entertainment programming.

* In May, a wave of Democratic politicians convened a dramatic series of congressional hearings on the subject. They were backed by three decades of voluminous research indicating that TV violence leads to more aggressive behavior in some viewers, plus new studies citing a rise in violence on television today. During one of the hearings, acting Federal Communications Commission Chairman James Quello voiced his support for imposing strict limits on when programs with violence could be shown.

* Last month, 19 major organizations, including the National PTA, the American Medical Assn. and the National Council of Churches, formed a letter-writing Citizens Task Force to combat TV violence.

All the while, a growing number of bills have been introduced that--if enacted--seem likely to pit Hollywood against Washington in a monumental battle over First Amendment rights.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the telecommunications and finance subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has proposed a TV-ratings system similar to the one used by theatrical movies and a government-mandated device on new TV sets that would let parents lock out violent programming. Other anti-violence bills seek to toughen the license-renewal process for TV stations, to remove tax breaks for advertisers and to issue a quarterly “violence report card” to shame the programmers and advertisers behind violent shows.

“I’m trying to make it a health issue,” said Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who authored a bill calling for a presidential commission to seek solutions to the problem. “I think we’re at the stage cigarettes were 30 years ago--before the surgeon general issued his study but when there were private studies that started to show quite conclusively that smoking was bad for you.”

What Simon essentially had in mind with his 1990 Television Violence Act--which granted the programmers and producers immunity from federal antitrust prosecution so they could meet voluntarily and devise a plan to self-regulate their industry--was a temporary cease-fire between the network, cable and syndication competitors to hammer out an agreement, right down to what kind of violence could be portrayed on the screen.

The networks’ first response to Congress came last December, when, in an unusual joint letter to Simon, ABC, CBS and NBC agreed to issue a uniform set of guidelines for the depiction of violence and to convene an industrywide conference about the subject. When the 15-point set of standards was released--including “all depictions of violence should be relevant and necessary to the development of character, or to the advancement of theme or plot” and “depictions of violence may not be used to shock or stimulate the audience”--critics quickly dismissed them because they contained no notable differences from the standards already in place at each network.

Similarly, last month’s press conference announcing an experimental, two-year “advance parent advisory plan” failed to impress the critics. The advisories will run before and during entertainment programs whose “violent content is unexpected, graphic or pervasive” to help parents make informed decisions about what to let their children watch. Politicians and activist groups say the networks are simply using the labels to abandon their responsibility as caretakers of the public airwaves by tossing the problem back to parents, rather than addressing it through programming.

“The networks have made noises in the past about dealing with this violence problem,” Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said with a sigh. “If you look at the history of this issue, you will see that Congress would focus and the networks would respond with rhetoric. But I don’t think anyone is going to be fooled this time. It’s got to be more than some catchy oratory at a press conference.”

After the cool reception of the parental-advisory labels, the Aug. 2 conference has become what might be the last chance for Hollywood to show Washington its commitment before Simon’s grace period runs out in December.

“I think the networks figure that the attention span of Congress is short, that this issue has been battered around for 30 to 40 years, that if they can fly by this period with fairly minimal or modest steps, then Congress will go away and think about something else,” Wyden said. “My own sense is that this is the time. The public is up in arms. Congress has extended the olive branch. Now it’s time for the networks and broadcast people to show they’re serious.”

But the networks maintain that they have already demonstrated their seriousness by arranging this conference to raise awareness, by agreeing to affix labels where necessary and by affirming in general their intention to “eliminate inappropriate depictions of violence.” They say they are not planning any more joint actions to address the subject before or even after the meeting--although they have not completely closed the door to the possibility. “We can’t say nothing will happen after the conference,” said a senior executive at one of the networks. “Someone may have an idea at the conference that’s so brilliant . . . but that’s not the idea behind the conference.”

The NCFT has been putting on annual TV conferences for 15 years, usually small, two-day retreats in Santa Barbara to sensitize the 100 or so producers, writers and network executives in attendance on how to responsibly portray such subjects as health, education and drug abuse.

This year, network executives asked the organization to independently organize a meeting on violence. The program was compressed to one day to accommodate the nearly 500 members of the broadcasting, cable, production and distribution communities who are expected to attend.

“The essential goal of the violence conference is to educate people about ways in which violence on television is being perceived by viewers and the impact that it’s having on viewers,” said Geoff Cowan, a public-interest lawyer and lecturer on mass media and law at UCLA who also serves as a vice chairman of the NCFT.

The first morning session at the Beverly Hilton Hotel will call on academics and researchers to explain their studies, to be followed by another morning session to focus on the effects of TV violence on children. The afternoon session will be a sort of Socratic dialogue between TV industry leaders and anti-violence activists. For the first time, the press has been invited to cover the conference.

Cowan hopes the meetings will serve a dual purpose by guiding network executives in what kind of projects they order into production, while suggesting ways for the creative community to avoid showing gratuitous violence. Cowan agrees that having a set of standards simply isn’t enough.

“That’s not the real problem,” he said. “Standards and practices (departments) tell you what to keep out of a movie once you’ve ordered a movie about a murder. They can all agree what to keep out of the Amy Fisher story, but there is still a problem that all three (major) networks ordered the Amy Fisher story.

“A lot of great human themes deal with violence. The problem with movies for television is not that they have some violence in them, but the themes are themes of current perversity, rather than themes of great human importance. I don’t think we would have people in Washington, or in their homes throughout America, complaining about violence in ‘Roots’ or ‘Holocaust’ or ‘Winds of War,’ even though they have significant violence.”

MTM President Allen says it is unrealistic to expect that solutions can be found to such vexing problems in a day. “People may come up with very interesting ideas at this conference, which will require some thought and refinement,” he argues. “Television is created by a creative process of thought and refinement, and that’s how I expect this problem to be dealt with--instead of hoping that by 5 p.m. at the close of the conference we can hand out the answer.”

David Grant, executive vice president of business operations for Fox, has a lot of questions he would like answered at the meeting: “What happens to kids when they watch violent programs? Is there a difference between action and violence? Is the impact on people the same when a robot blows up as when a person is shot? I want to know those things.

“Violence in dramatic works has been around forever,” explained Grant, who says he is making attendance mandatory for many Fox executives. “What we need to do is meld our responsibility with our sense of dramatic creation, and not go nuts one way or another.”

The networks have maintained for the most part that they do not show excessive violence--which is why the new parental-advisory warnings are not expected to be seen much in their fall programming. Most of their weekly series are benign comedies, executives point out, and their standards departments edit inappropriate material from drama series and movies.

So the networks seem to be approaching the conference warily. They resoundingly reject the concept of a ratings system or any plan that would dictate what they can or can’t put on the screen.

“The decision-making process is subjective, and in a free, democratic society needs to remain so,” said Beth Bressan, vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group. “The process is also a creative one. To be too mechanistic in our approach will only inhibit creativity and stop diverse programming.”

Christine Hikawa, vice president of standards and practices at ABC, believes the networks have become scapegoats. “Because people are very concerned with violence in society, as we are, we think there’s a greater perception of violence on TV,” she said.

In addition, Hikawa believes the growth of cable television has added to that perception. “There appears to be more violence on TV because now there are 36 channels to choose from,” she explained. “Quite frankly, the networks have less violence than ever before.”

According to Sen. Simon, however, many TV executives have privately acknowledged to him over the years that too much violence is coming out of the tube. The dilemma is that violence often means ratings, and if network programmers lose their guts--both on screen and off--then other networks, syndicators or cable services will hold the competitive edge. TV producers, in turn, say they make violent programs because that’s what the networks order.

The networks have been much more cautious in recent months as a result of the heightened focus on violence; they’re simply not getting credit for the behind-the-scenes decisions they’re making, said Rosalyn Weinman, vice president of broadcast standards for NBC.

For instance, NBC recently created two different versions of a promo for the theatrical movie “Mobsters”--a tame version for the early evening and a more graphic one for late at night. And even though a movie about a substitute teacher killing students would deliver huge ratings, Weinman said, NBC not long ago rejected that exact movie pitch, which was picked up later as a feature film.

“We have been much more careful and sensitive to the (violence) issue,” she said. “There have been a lot of discussions about how to filter it down to the program level. And we ourselves are trying to do this in a thoughtful way, and not in a knee-jerk reaction.”

If nothing else comes out of the NCFT conference, all agree that there clearly needs to be a better definition of violence if Washington and Hollywood are ever going to come together.

A recent study by George Gerbner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, found that the average 16-year-old in America has watched 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 33,000 murders. The study said that Saturday morning cartoons are among the worst offenders.

For that reason, Geraldine Laybourne, president of the children’s cable channel Nickelodeon, has a problem with studies that attempt to quantify violence. She recalls her network once being cited for excessive violence in “You Can’t Do That on Television,” a slapstick series for kids.

“They said we had the same number of violent acts as a movie of the week that had decapitations,” said Laybourne, who is also a panelist at the conference. “They counted a pie in the face the same as a decapitation. To me, it was so ludicrous.” Gerbner’s “Violence Index” defines violence as any “clear-cut and overt episodes of physical violence--hurting or killing or the threat of hurting and/or killing--in any context.”

Another key function the conference may serve is to pull together the broadcast and cable communities. So far, the cable programmers have remained largely unscathed because cable is an unregulated service that people pay to bring into their homes, whereas broadcasters are licensed by the federal government to use the public airwaves.

“Right now there are not very many cable entities out there using any standards or guidelines,” sniped CBS’ Bressan. “When there are so many cable outlets out there saying, in effect, ‘Come watch us because we do not self-regulate,’ how much of the television landscape is really going to change? It’s very unfair to say the networks should do more when the networks are the only ones who have done anything to date.”

As part of an action plan that includes participating in the Aug. 2 conference, cable networks have agreed to develop their own sets of internal standards by the end of the year. A study commissioned by the National Cable Television Assn. concluded in January that “when all kinds of dramatic programs are taken into account, the level of violence on cable-originated programming is about the same as the violence on broadcast network programming.”

To the critics, however, that’s too little, too late. So too may be the conference.

“I think the underlying reason for this meeting is to call the dogs off, to get the government off their back, to go through the motions of pleasing Sen. Simon,” said Terry Rakolta, founder of Americans for Responsible TV, a grass-roots organization that claims 200,000 members. Rakolta, who advocates banning violent programs between 4 and 9 p.m., will be a panelist at the conference.

She sees the whole NCFT event as a smoke screen: “There is a veiled threat of government intervention if they don’t come up with something soon.”

And what if the industry can’t, or won’t, come up with a satisfactory solution for the lawmakers?

“The conference is a useful discussion, but I honestly don’t have high hopes that the industry, whose behavior is fueled by the competitive juices to win ratings, will ever be able to resist the more sensational, more violent television programming,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). He is one of several lawmakers who expressed a clear intention to go ahead and press legal solutions if the NCFT conference does not yield a firm plan of action.

“I think it’s likely that some legislation will move,” he said.

Bob Peck, a legal counselor for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that any federal legislation attempting to govern the airwaves won’t wash. “It can’t, constitutionally,” he said. “As soon as they say what people can say, read or see through their television sets, then they’re engaging in censorship, which the First Amendment clearly protects against.”

The Federal Communications Commission has a regulation prohibiting radio and TV stations from broadcasting sexually explicit, indecent programming between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., when children are likely to be in the audience, and there has been talk of creating similar legislation for violent programming. But Peck said even the indecency ruling has been tough to enforce in court.

“The fact of the matter remains that the most powerful restraint on television programming remains the viewers,” he said. “What they will watch and won’t watch has more effect than anything that Washington will pass.”