Execs Pledge Unity Over Ratings Issue

The 30 entertainment executives, including many of the richest and most powerful in the industry, sat one beside another in a long row opposite the President of the United States on Thursday with all the enthusiasm of so many dental patients sitting down for root canal work.

Here they were, the giants of the broadcast networks, the cable providers and the production companies, being told that their industry represents a serious threat to the moral development of the nation’s children.

They emerged from their two hours committed to identifying violent and sexually explicit programs and providing parents with the means, via a computer “V-chip,” of blacking out these programs.

And now the hard part begins: establishing a ratings system that can be in use in American homes by the first of next year--and then actually rating the 600,000 hours a year of programming that is typically available from a 72-channel cable television system.

Although the entertainment moguls pledged unity and cooperation, many of them harbor deep misgivings about the impact of such a system on their viewers, their advertisers and their bottom lines.

“I’m not against providing information about programming, but the V-chip is dangerous,” Barry Diller, the former chairman of the Fox television network and of Paramount Pictures, said in an interview after the White House summit. “The most we should do is to provide parental advisories on some shows, not ratings.”

“People are going to realize how difficult this is going to be,” said Diller, now chairman of Silver King Communications. “TV is not movies. TV series change week to week. How do you define sexual or violent content? Is ‘Ren and Stimpy’ [a satirical cartoon series on cable TV] violent? Is ‘The Simpsons’ sexual because it may occasionally show Homer Simpson’s butt? And how does that compare to a love scene on ‘NYPD Blue’?

“It’s understandable that people would look to the V-chip and ratings to fix the problems of a complicated world. The fact that neither of them will succeed is currently beside the point.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Michael Ovitz, president of Walt Disney Co., the new owner of ABC, was the most vigorous of the broadcast network executives in supporting a ratings system. But even Ovitz warned that the deadline of Jan. 1, 1997, poses a difficult challenge.

“I think it’s doable, but it’s going to take a lot longer than everybody expects,” he said.

On this much, however, the 30 executives agreed: It’s better for the TV industry to produce its own ratings system than to let the government do it under provisions of the recently enacted overhaul of telecommunications law.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said during the White House meeting:

“Within each of us, Mr. President, is a real core belief, a unity of belief, that government censorship, government regulation, government intervention at any level, and no matter how benign its public declarations, is fundamentally in conflict with 200 years’ heritage of free speech in this free and loving land.”

Some expressed even stronger concerns privately.

“Where does this end?” asked one industry executive who requested anonymity. “Are we going to have politicians who don’t even watch the shows they condemn telling us what kinds of shows we should be putting on the air? Will special-interest groups demand their own ratings system?

“This governmentally mandated system of ratings and V-chips comes dangerously close to censorship, and it invites further action by politicians who know beating up on Hollywood is a vote getter.”

Many of the executives expressed the concern that advertisers, never big on controversy, will avoid shows that get the TV equivalent of an “R” rating. “We believe there will be some advertiser fallout,” said Robert Wright, president of NBC.

“There certainly is a lot of concern that a ratings system might be a real advertising problem,” said Robert A. Iger, president of Capital Cities/ABC Inc.

Advertisers contacted by The Times, however, said they favor a ratings system.

We “strongly believe that parents should be well-informed about the content of programs their children are about to see on television,” said John J. Sarsen Jr., president of the New York-based Assn. of National Advertisers.

Several executives fear that a ratings system will lead to blander programming. Cable network pioneer Ted Turner, who favors a TV ratings system as an informational tool, said, “There will be more ‘Brady Bunch’-type programming and less cutting-edge shows.”

Stephen Bochco, who created “NYPD Blue,” the critically acclaimed police drama, has said that the show would not get on the air today if a ratings system was in place. The drama occasionally runs with a parental advisory, one of the few currently provided on network TV, and ABC says the advisories cost it significant advertiser revenue before the show became a hit.

The most difficult part of creating the ratings system, executives said, will be to find categories and definitions of content that can be applied by all the networks. Network executives are divided about how difficult it will be to rate the shows once categories are determined.

One executive said it will be extremely difficult to rate the thousands of hours of programming that air each week. But another said that once categories are agreed upon, it will be time-consuming but not impossible for the standards departments of each network to rate its shows the network airs.

One executive asked: “What will happen when a show comes in close to the air date, as many do? And what will we do if the producer and the network disagree on the rating? We haven’t even thought about that possibility yet.”

The networks have not yet grappled with which kinds of programming they will rate. Will steamy soap operas be rated? What about talk shows?

Turner said he believes even local news shows should be rated because they contain so much murder and mayhem.

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The Guest List

Thirty entertainment industry executives met with President Clinton on Thursday to begin the process of establishing a ratings system for television.

Name: Decker Anstrom

Title: President

Company: National Cable Television Assn.

*

Name: Robert A. Daly

Title: Chairman and co-CEO

Company: Warner Bros., Warner Music Group

*

Name: Barry Diller

Title: Chairman and CEO

Company: Silver King Communications

*

Name: Jonathan L. Dolgen

Title: Chairman

Company: Viacom Entertainment Group

*

Name: Ervin S. Duggan

Title: President and CEO

Company: Public Broadcasting Service

*

Name: Rich Frank

Title: Chairman and CEO

Company: C-3

*

Name: Edward Fritts

Title: President and CEO

Company: National Assn. of Broadcasters

*

Name: Robert A. Iger

Title: President and COO

Company: Capital Cities/ABC

*

Name: Robert L. Johnson

Title: President and CEO

Company: Black Entertainment Television

*

Name: Michael Jordan

Title: Chairman and CEO

Company: Westinghouse Electric

*

Name: Jeffrey Katzenberg

Title: Founder

Company: Dreamworks SKG

*

Name: Kay Koplovitz

Title: Founder, chairman and CEO

Company: USA Networks

*

Name: Alan Levine

Title: President and COO

Company: Sony Pictures Entertainment

*

Name: Peter A. Lund

Title: CEO

Company: CBS

*

Name: Frank G. Mancuso

Title: Chairman and CEO

Company: MGM

*

Name: Richard Masur

Title: President

Company: Screen Actor Guild

*

Name: Judith McHale

Title: President and COO

Company: Discovery Channel

*

Name: Ron Meyer

Title: President and COO

Company: MCA

*

Name: Rupert Murdoch

Title: CEO

Company: News Corp.

*

Name: Michael S. Ovitz

Title: President

Company: Walt Disney

*

Name: Brad Radnitz

Title: President

Company: Writers Guild of America, West

*

Name: Gene Reynolds

Title: President

Company: Directors Guild of America

*

Name: Brian Roberts

Title: CEO

Company: Comcast

*

Name: Ray Rodriguez

Title: President

Company: Univision Television Network

*

Name: Haim Saban

Title: Chairman and CEO

Company: Saban Entertainment

*

Name: Lucille S. Salhany

Title: Chairman and CEO

Company: United Paramount Network

*

Name: Terry Semel

Title: Chairman and co-CEO

Company: Warner Bros., Warner Music Group

*

Name: Ted Turner

Title: CEO

Company: Turner Broadcasting

*

Name: Jack Valenti

Title: President

Company: Motion Picture Assn. of America

*

Name: Robert C. Wright

Title: President and CEO

Company: NBC