Ratings Are Just One Tiny Step for Mankind

NR-B (Newspaper Reader Beware): The following column should not be read by anyone unattended. It may or may not be unsuitable for readers of all ages. It may or may not be too sophisticated for children who may or may not be ages 2 to 6. It may or may not frighten children who may or may not be older than 7. It may or may not contain material that may or may not be too profane for readers who may or may not be older than 14. It may or may not confuse some adults who may or may not have acquired the developmental skills that may or may not be needed to distinguish between what may or may not be make-believe and reality.

In conclusion, due to the length of this content rating, there will be no column.

You wish.

Not that bulky labels will be something that entertainment programs will face when the television industry soon begins stamping them for age-related content, the WB network as early as this weekend. On the contrary, a widely awaited new content rating system announced Thursday by Jack Valenti, one of the great spin-meisters of the age, turns out to be largely what was forecast by advance doubters: Scant. Unspecific. Inadequate. Age-tilted. Better than nothing.

But not significantly better.

A first step, but hardly a full stride.

It’s a step that many in the industry have resisted. No less specious today than previously is their argument--on the lips of many smart, earnest people, no less--that the 1st Amendment is undermined when programs are labeled for content. They claim that the networks will now stifle creative voices out of fear that the programs they devise will evoke ratings that will frighten off viewers.

In other words, springing surprises on viewers is your basic apple pie, but alerting them in advance through content labels is a violation of freedom of speech and un-American? Informing the marketplace is censorship? Go figure.

Just as baffling were Thursday morning’s TV news accounts of the ratings following the televised unveiling in Washington by Valenti, chairman of the ratings committee and president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which administers the similar motion picture ratings.

On CNN and other newscasts, only the six brief ratings classifications were reported, not the more detailed content descriptions that they represent--repeatedly creating a false impression that content is entirely absent from the new ratings.

How ironic that occurring elsewhere in Washington simultaneously with the Valenti show was a Senate panel’s hearing on media coverage of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing last July, when news organizations galore blabbed everything they knew--and didn’t know--about then-suspect Richard Jewell. Yet curiously on Thursday, some omitted what they did know about the new ratings system, which the gabby Valenti had defined for them in detail with large charts.

They knew, for example, that even the shortest classification--TV-M (mature audiences only)--includes the following definition: “This program is specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17. This program may contain mature themes, profane language, graphic violence and explicit sexual content.”

This is useful information that can be utilized with the remote-control V-chip technology coming to new TV sets in 1998, allowing parents and others to block individual shows or types of programs based on their ratings. And although only the brief classifications will appear with programs, viewers should be able to learn the full definitions in other ways--especially over time, as they have with the movie ratings.

Thus, as Valenti has been insisting for some time, the new system is hardly as devoid of content detail as its strongest critics charge.

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Yet this is where the good news ends, for the six categories--roughly resembling those applied to movies by the MPAA--are too vague.

When it’s said that a program “may contain profane language, graphic violence and explicit sexual content,” for example, you can interpret that as meaning also that it may not, or that it may include only some of those elements. The only way to find out for certain is to watch a program, which defeats the purpose of the content ratings and V-chips.

Moreover, many viewers will want to know how “mature” are the themes, how “profane” the language, how “graphic” the violence and how “explicit” the sexual content.

They could determine that from clearly defined numerical ratings for sex, violence and coarse language content--a system advocated by many activist groups. They cannot learn it from the “user-friendly” system outlined by Valenti.

Also blurry is whether the new ratings will apply to all news programs.

News and “magazine programs” are correctly excluded from the ratings, but left unsaid is whether the latter label extends to weightless syndicated fare such as “Entertainment Tonight” and syndicated tabloid series the likes of “Inside Edition” and “Hard Copy.” It should. Even though material on tabloid series, for example, is often sleazy, shrill and shaky on ethics, they are as much a part of the news family as is that granite edifice, “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” on PBS. If news is information, however questionable, they are news programs. On a given night, moreover, the difference between them and a mainstream newsmagazine or local newscast is nearly nil, especially given the increased tendency of mainstream news programs to quote tabloids.

Clearly, the new ratings system is headed for a shake-out period perhaps even longer than the 10-month trial urged by President Clinton. It’s a system, its critics correctly note, that designates foxes to guard the chickens. In contrast to the MPAA movie ratings, which are applied by an independent board that includes parent representatives, the networks, cable channels, producers, syndicators and others that originate programs will rate their own fare. Valenti vowed that his group will also “go into the countryside” and elicit input from “real parents.”

Yet those who actually decide the ratings are largely the same crowd that shaped the spotty TV environment that provoked the widespread rage that brought the industry to its present level of turbulence and forced the drafting of this “voluntary” system of labeling programs.

They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the arena of public responsibility. If it’s trust they want, they have a tall mountain to climb.