TV Ratings for Content or for Control?

The content-based ratings system recently foisted on television’s creative community by broadcasters is a classic example of fear and political expediency replacing rational thinking and constructive problem-solving (“The Ratings Game; S, L, V, D: Drawing the Line,” Calendar, July 30). Beyond that, it raises extremely troubling free-speech issues that have been assiduously avoided by the politicians who have jumped on the anti-violence bandwagon. And who can blame them, since violence in the media has become one of the few political bulletproof issues for both the left and the right? Violence has no constituency.

However, it is absolutely amazing to me how blind many Americans seem to be when it comes to examining the real agendas of their country’s political leaders. We all know that politics makes strange bedfellows. But how can organizations such as the National Education Assn., the National PTA and the Children’s Defense Fund willingly align themselves and utilize Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as their surrogate in the Senate? McCain obviously has no moral dilemma about being the senatorial voice supposedly protecting the children of America from those murderous 30-inch Sonys, when during the 102nd Congress he voted against the five-day waiting period for handgun purchases, and in the 103rd Congress, voted against the Brady Bill.

As praiseworthy as the abstract goals of those behind content ratings are, the so-called “voluntary” ratings code is tantamount to coercion. Broadcasters have a wide range of politically intensive problems they are dealing with, but the total capitulation by the networks (with the commendable exception of NBC) is as “voluntary” as somebody handing over his wallet when there is a .45 pointed between his eyes.

Why do you think the producers responsible for shows as diverse as “Friends,” “St. Elsewhere,” “JAG,” “Saturday Night Live,” “Roar,” “Coach,” “thirtysomething,” “ER” and “Seinfeld,” to name a few, have banded together in support of NBC’s courageous stand? The answer was succinctly stated in a recent ad in the Hollywood trades, where the producers concurred: “We believe that our children’s television viewing should be monitored by their parents and should never be dictated, in any form, by the government.”

Even parents unconcerned about the 1st Amendment implications should be aware of some potential real world consequences of a content-based rating system. Unfortunately, the vast majority of parents and politicians don’t seem to realize that the reason that broadcast television is free is that it’s a life-support system for commercials. In fact, advertisers are terrified of programming that is controversial in any way. Major advertisers don’t spend millions of dollars a year on broadcast advertising to be targeted by special-interest groups because they bought time on a show that carries a V (violence), S (sex), L (language) or D (suggestive dialogue) rating.

The perfect example of advertiser fear was the first season of “Law & Order,” now the longest-running drama on television. The first six months it was on the air, it had more advertiser pull-outs than any show on network television. This wasn’t because of the violence (the cops haven’t fired their guns in seven years) or sexual conduct (there was none) or offensive language, but because of the subjects that we were dealing with: the bombing of an abortion clinic, child molestation and assisted suicide for AIDS patients. Another example was the first season of “NYPD Blue,” where advertisers stayed away in droves--despite the fact that it was in the Nielsen Top 20--because of the adult-content warning that ABC attached to the front of the shows.

The fear in the creative community is not what will happen to these shows, but what will happen to future shows. Which networks will stand behind the next generation of hard-hitting, issues-oriented adult dramas if, by their ratings, they become the focus of special-interest groups?

Proponents of the new ratings system made this agenda clear by declaring that ratings on certain shows would make advertisers shun them, and they would be canceled. The goal is economic censorship. It is not content identification; it is content control.

The creative community is not an out-of-control group of video pornographers. We, too, are parents concerned with what images dance before our children’s eyes. But we want parents to be parents. “PG” means parental guidance. Those are the only initials of the new “voluntary” system that have real meaning, not the 96 alphabet soup permutations possible underneath them.