The Long, Political Road to Ratings

He won’t be on hand when the television industry reluctantly announces plans for a ratings system Thursday, but Dan Quayle may be having the last laugh.

Perhaps lost in the hoopla surrounding the plan is that the much-lampooned former vice president helped set the ball rolling in regard to examining TV’s influence in 1992, with his indictment of television undermining “family values.”

Politics, in fact, has shaped and steeped the entire ratings process, as the idea of regulating TV content followed a long and winding path straddling both sides of the political aisle.

Democrats found themselves on the defensive pertaining to the “family values” issue, and Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole later sounded similar themes in his presidential campaign, attacking movies for presenting “nightmares of depravity.”

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Small wonder, then, that Clinton administration officials--after seizing the notion of policing television content as another sign of the president’s commitment to children--couldn’t resist gloating about how they had out-flanked Republicans.

“We’ve parachuted behind enemy lines and stolen their issues,” a senior Clinton official exulted in February after leading TV industry figures met with the president at the White House to pledge their commitment to developing a ratings system.

That the finished product is being greeted without enthusiasm by the industry this week underscores how effectively the president turned TV ratings into an election-year issue, cornering Hollywood executives--many of whom are among his most ardent supporters--who had long opposed government interference with program content on 1st Amendment grounds.

“We’re handing the remote control back to America’s parents so that they can pass on their values and protect their children,” Clinton said after that February meeting.

Couched in those terms, the industry had little recourse. As Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti told network representatives shortly after the president summoned them to Washington in his State of the Union address, “How does it look for us to be against helping parents and children? That’s kind of hard to defend.”

In 1993, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), then chairman of the powerful House telecommunications subcommittee, held hearings on television violence, proposing legislation for a “V-chip”--equipping TV sets with a device that would allow parents to block out programs labeled as containing violence.

Entertainment industry figures, vehemently opposed to the plan, held a contentious, daylong seminar on TV violence at which Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) urged them to police themselves as a means of forestalling government intervention.

Feeling the tide rising against them, the broadcast networks decided to offer an intermediate measure they hoped would defuse the call for ratings. In early 1994, they agreed to jointly retain an independent monitor to annually review levels of TV violence.

Even so, the networks’ efforts failed to mollify legislators. Markey and others pressed forward, with the Senate approving plans for the V-chip and a TV ratings system in June 1995 as part of a telecommunications reform bill. Clinton added his endorsement the next month, then in his State of the Union address invited broadcast and cable executives to meet with him in order to seek ways “we can work together to improve what our children see on television.”

Network officials were still stating their opposition to the V-chip on 1st Amendment grounds, but Valenti--who nearly three decades earlier masterminded the movie ratings system--convinced them they could take preemptive action, adopting the more benign, MPAA-like system used in motion pictures rather than the content-based code being tested in Canada, which used labels like “V” (violence), “S” (sex) and “L” (language).

In addition, the networks were advised that a court challenge to government-imposed ratings would be more effective if they first tried to implement a system of their own. Valenti has asked that the system to be unveiled Thursday be given a chance, while on several occasions threatening that industry lawyers would “be in federal court in a nanosecond” should lawmakers impose any more direct form of censorship.