Holdout by NBC to Provide Real Test

I’m back. Yes, back from a vacation of watching low-speed gondola chases in Venice (the Italian one), sans TV choppers, and joining Japanese, German and other Americans in Paris searching Montmartre for Jose Ferrer.

Did I tune in global CNN just a teensy-weensy bit? Does an addict end his habit overnight? Yet I’m back renewed, refreshed, regenerated, restored and reconstituted after three weeks of stroking my jaw about the deeper meaning of life and lost luggage. Yes, back more thoughtful than ever and, believe you me, with plenty of profundities and intelligent observations to share.

Instead, I’ve written this column.

So what happens? I blow into town and find NBC still stubbornly digging its heels into obsolescence and rejecting the amended ratings system recently adopted by most of the TV industry. You know, the one with an expanded alphabet soup of program labels for levels of violence, smutty talk and innuendo, the one scheduled to supplant the still-infant, less-specific ratings already in place.

Starting in February, new TV sets by law must contain V-chips keyed to content codings, allowing viewers to do a little maneuver that will block from their homes programs labeled for material that doesn’t suit them. Sort of the way castles I visited in northern Italy must have poured boiling oil on invaders who managed to cross the moat.

The new plan adds S (sex), L (language), V (violence) and D (suggestive dialogue) to the present age-oriented plan (TV-14 and so on) that NBC says it will continue applying. The new ratings are set to become operative Oct. 1. They are about to come before the Federal Communications Commission, whose endorsement would not make them mandatory but would increase pressure on holdout NBC to conform.

NBC’s official position is: “As a matter of principle, there is no place for government involvement in what people watch on television.” Yes, of course. Break out Old Glory, start the strings, pull out the hankies and rev up John Tesh.

But NBC’s freedom-from-intrusion anthem is not applicable in this instance. Its spin just doesn’t spin. The lyrics are nice, the melody strictly Roseanne.

Oh, it’s true that the drafting of both the present ratings and brawnier new system was as voluntary as facing a firing squad. Both came in response to withering pressure from TV reformers and, especially, the federal government, with some vote-driven, opportunistic members of Congress joining true believers in embracing an issue they felt would resonate like a thunderbolt--not only with much of the public but with the media. The industry’s choice: with or without the blindfold?

As always, sharpshooting from Capitol Hill is something to be extremely wary of when it potentially affects what we can and can’t watch on TV, and there are subtle levers that government also can use against broadcasters. Memo to congressional would-be censors: Hands off!

That’s a separate, if adjoining storm cloud, however, for the concept of the ratings--informing viewers about content with specificity, however imperfect those labels inevitably will be--is sound. It is not at all intrusive or a 1st Amendment issue. It’s as American as “ER.” It’s patriotic. Patrick Henry would have signed on in an instant.

However, not NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer, who blasted program ratings in an interview with The Times earlier this month. And not John Shreves Jr., senior vice president and general manager of WWBT-TV, an NBC station in Richmond, Va.

This week’s issue of the trade publication Electronic Media carries Shreves’ letter supporting his parent network’s stand and faulting program ratings. Although some TV is flawed, Shreves wrote, improvement will come only when we “respect the fact that the American television industry has done a superb job of distributing news, information and entertainment to the citizens of our country, and our industry deserves every opportunity to benefit from the protections of the First Amendment.”

Then the American history lesson, with Shreves cautioning those attacking TV and its content: “At another time in our history, a substantial number of people believed that much of what Thomas Jefferson wrote and said was obscene.”

Where is the boiling oil when you really need it?

On the other hand, NBC didn’t rocket to the top of the Nielsens by airing programs that repulse viewers. What if critics of the ratings are correct about them being less a creation of principle than of politics? What if most of the public really doesn’t give a damn and is happy with the status quo? What if the protesters are merely a tiny but loud minority? Thanks to NBC, we may get some answers.

That is why I’m pulling for NBC to hold firm in its opposition to the new ratings and not buckle under to pressure, whatever its origin. In doing so, NBC would clearly differentiate itself from its competitors on the screen when it comes to the ratings issue, giving viewers a black-and-white choice of systems.

If most viewers do find the present ratings too vague and are truly bristling about TV, as advocates of the new plan insist, then Nielsen champ NBC’s audience will hemorrhage accordingly if it continues to use the present system, right? If NBC doesn’t decline dramatically, then we will know with certainty that the issue has been overblown, that detailed content ratings--however strongly some of us believe in them--are the will mostly of special-interest groups and politicians, not the public.