PBS, BET Dig In Against TV Ratings

Even as the television industry seeks approval from the government and the public for its controversial new ratings system, it has failed to convince two of its own.

While most cable channels are slowly joining the major broadcast networks in labeling TV shows to help parents guide their children’s viewing, two significant exceptions are beginning to stand out: PBS and cable’s Black Entertainment Television.

The presidents of PBS and BET indicated in interviews that they have no intention of utilizing the 3-month-old industry ratings--the former because he thinks it doesn’t go far enough in providing useful information, the latter because he thinks it was adopted in response to government pressure and violates the industry’s 1st Amendment rights.

Their opposition could be damaging as the rest of the industry, behind the leadership of ratings architect and Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti, seeks to stave off critics in Congress and advocacy groups who want labels that provide more information about program content. Already some cable executives have privately expressed a willingness to go further in that direction than their broadcast colleagues are willing.

The industry system, which uses designations such as TV-G, TV-PG and TV-14 to categorize programs by their appropriateness to children of various ages, is now under review by the Federal Communications Commission.

“I lament the fact that, out of all the cable and broadcast networks, PBS and BET are the only ones who have remained aloof,” Valenti said. “But this is a voluntary system we’re doing--we can’t coerce them to participate.”

One broadcast network executive who requested anonymity was less diplomatic. “Our critics, of course, will use their opposition against us,” the executive said. “It’s getting very hard to tell who our friends are. [PBS President Ervin] Duggan wants to set up PBS as the arbiter of quality on television, and many cable networks would like to see broadcasters as regulated as possible.”

Robert Johnson, the president of BET, a basic-cable service that reaches 45 million homes, said he was opposed to the ratings on philosophical grounds. The industry agreed to develop and implement the plan under pressure from Congress and President Clinton.

“The broadcasters caved on this thing without so much as a nod to the 1st Amendment,” Johnson said. “They looked at their business interests--specifically, spectrum space--and decided to sacrifice free speech.” He was referring to broadcasters’ hope that Congress will continue to let them use the airwaves for free when they switch from the current analog spectrum to digital spectrum for distributing their programming.

Although he attended the White House “mogul-fest” where the industry announced its intention to adopt ratings on Feb. 29, 1996, Johnson said he opposes what he sees as potential government intrusion in TV content.

“All this talk about ‘family values’ can be a slippery slope,” Johnson said. “I told President Clinton, ‘I have confidence in you--but what if we have David Duke as president someday?’

Duggan, on the other hand, opposes the ratings because he believes that they do not go far enough.

“I see no reason to embrace the ratings system devised by commercial television,” he said. “It’s imprecise--virtually everything is rated PG--and it’s grudging in the information it provides to parents.”

Like other critics of the ratings, Duggan said that programmers “should provide more content information, not less.”

PBS might be open, he said, to a system that also incorporated S, V and L designations to indicate whether programs contained strong doses of sex, violence or foul language.

Johnson, however, said he thought that addition “would be worse.” “How would you define S, V and L?” he asked.

Duggan had suggested to the committee that devised the ratings last year that it include a label that would denote quality educational programming for children. He was turned down. But he said that fact alone didn’t determine his decision not to use the ratings. He said he was more upset that the committee had failed to heed the recommendations of parents and children’s groups it met with that had argued in favor of ratings that alerted viewers to sex, language and violence.

“I had hoped that there would be a real deliberative process” in devising the ratings, Duggan said.

Valenti has said that the committee considered this approach but rejected it in favor of a system that it believed was simpler and would be familiar to viewers because of its similarity to the movie industry ratings.

Both Johnson and Duggan maintained that parents had little to worry about in watching BET and PBS.

BET does run music videos but Johnson said they are screened in advance. “I don’t consider any of the videos that we air to be violent,” he said.

And Duggan said that PBS already provides content advisories on its programs when necessary, such as the frequently violent “Prime Suspect” episodes about a homicide detective. The network also provides full descriptions of content for PBS stations’ programming guides and even offered an edited version of “Moll Flanders” recently for stations that considered the British miniseries too racy, he said.

Duggan’s stance on the ratings appears to be embraced by PBS stations, which do not have to abide by the national network’s policy. PBS officials said that only one public television station, WNEO-TV in Kent, Ohio, is rating shows according to the TV industry’s guidelines.

Duggan recently wrote Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the regulation of the television industry, applauding the committee for “exploring questions” surrounding the TV ratings controversy in recent hearings.

The PBS president said that he intends to file comments about the ratings with the FCC, which is soliciting written appraisals of the ratings from the public until April 8.

Meantime, the House committee that oversees telecommunications intends to hold hearings on the ratings in May.