Rating Proposal for TV Shows

Re “Clinton Supports Industry on TV Rating Proposal,” Dec. 14:

The president should use his bully pulpit to attempt to deny the “entertainment” industries their blatant attempt to continue the deplorable status quo. TV, film and video rating systems should be identical, with specified degrees of violence, sex and language.

Trailers for coming attractions should also be rated for degrees of violence. When we saw the gentle film “Babe,” about an orphaned pig, the theater audience was subjected to 20 minutes of constant horrendous violence, without sex, in four coming attraction trailers, rated G or PG. The audience included a large number of small children.

The current film rating system is absolutely unusable. Ratings effectively only refer to sexual content. Even those ratings are unhelpful as to the nature of sex depicted. Violence is not really rated. Adults are just as interested in avoiding the increasingly gratuitous violence in films and TV for themselves as for their children.

The proposed TV rating system is more of the same, without meaning, but with different age groupings from film ratings, which would add more confusion. We need information on specifics, not many different industry censors applying their notions of what should be seen by age group.

DICK LITTLESTONE

Pacific Palisades

* Re “Put Jenny, Sally and Jerry Out of Work,” Column Right, Dec. 10: Arianna Huffington’s excellent criticism of the grotesque trash-talk television we (and children arriving home from school) continue to confront on our screens merits a big “hurrah!” Where is the FCC, the public’s “watchdog” these days?

I wonder if she could take on Jack Valenti and his TV ratings committee. They appear to be working very hard to do everything possible to avoid rating any program as “unsuitable for children.” With their head-in-the-sand philosophy (parents control what their children watch--even “guide” their offspring through the more “unsuitable” shows) chances are most TV programs will just happen to be rated PG. This will serve to alleviate industry responsibility for the bilge that it continues to pass on to the public as entertainment.

JUNE MAGUIRE

Mission Viejo