Birth Pains for TV Rating System

Responding to mounting public complaints that violent and risque content on many television programs could corrupt young viewers, President Clinton signed a bill last February giving the TV and cable industries one year to devise a system to guide parents.

Cable and TV executives had just the answer. They went to Jack Valenti, the man who nearly three decades ago devised the motion picture rating system. Valenti might have seemed an odd choice. He had, for instance, denounced television as a “pathological nanny” and cable TV as a “viral contagion.”

Nevertheless, Valenti took the job and last week the media obtained a draft of his proposal for a TV ratings system that evaluates shows on the basis of what is appropriate for child viewers at various age levels. The reaction from a broad coalition of educators, psychologists and media scholars has been resoundingly negative. A ratings system based on age level alone, these experts argue, does little to help parents decide which TV shows they should let their kids watch.

What’s needed, they said, is a system geared to more specific criteria, like whether a show includes graphic sex, profane or lewd language or violence. At a press conference Thursday, however, Valenti dug in his heels, insisting that “we will not use any other TV ratings guidelines except the ones that we are going to announce next week.”

That sounds like the last word, but it’s not. Valenti’s guidelines, which are similar to the ones he devised for the motion picture industry, in this case have to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC should reject them unless the final wording, which Valenti promises to release next week, addresses the following:

% The ratings should not be set by TV producers alone. Under Valenti’s system, producers would rate their own shows. This poses a conflict of interest, for TV producers could hardly be expected to give themselves a rating that would reduce audience share.

% Ratings posted before the start of programs should carry specific sex, language and violence warnings, particularly when the programs are in the early evening hours, a time younger children may be watching. The point is not to censor content but to provide parents some indication of what the content is so they can prevent children from watching if they choose.

Although the FCC is empowered to reject Valenti’s guidelines, the agency cannot require broadcasters and cable operators to adopt a ratings standard. But while Valenti has vowed to fight any substitute for his approach, he and the industries he represents are bound to be influenced by popular opposition. The viewing public deserves a sensible, understandable system.