On March 12, 1998, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order adopting a television program ratings system and technical requirements for the V-chip. The FCC action followed months of rancorous debate and negotiations over the 1996 Telecommunications Act1s mandate of a system for blocking TV programming considered objectionable.

Backgroung

   Section 551 of the Telecommunications Act (Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56) required the television industry to provide parents with timely information about video programming and to develop the technical ability - the so-called V-chip - to block violent, sexual, or other content deemed harmful to children. If the industry failed to establish such a system, the law called for the FCC to appoint a commission to develop a ratings system.

   But the TV industry, represented by the National Association of Broadcasters, National Cable Television Association, and Motion Picture Association of America, developed an aged-based rating, and put it into effect in January 1997. The industry submitted the proposed system to the FCC for approval that same month.

   This system, consisting of six categories based on age/maturity, came under heavy criticism from advocacy groups and others; some members of Congress threatened additional legislative action if the industry didn1t provide more information to parents and viewers. Working with some of the advocacy groups, the industry revised the system, which it submitted to the FCC on Aug. 1, 1997 and implemented on Oct. 1, 1997.

Guidelines Adopted by FCC

   "TV Parental Guidelines" specifies descriptive labels to indicate appropriateness of all programming, except news, sports, commercials, and unedited MPAA-rated movies. Appropriateness is determined by age and/or maturity designators supplemented by content indicators for sex, violence, language, and dialogue. The age-based categories are TV-Y for all children; TV-Y7 for children 7 and above; TV-G for general audiences; TV-PG for parental guidance; TV-14, parents strongly cautioned; and TV-MA for mature audiences. The content-based indicators, which are added to the age categories when appropriate, are FV for fantasy violence; S for sex; V for violence; L for adult language; and D for suggestive dialogue. Program producers rate the programs but individual stations can substitute their own ratings.

   In addition to implementing the ratings system, the industry also agreed in the guidelines to:

• broadcast ratings signals on Line 21 of the vertical blanking intervals (the same part of the signal that carries closed captioning);
• provide ratings information to newspapers and publishers of printed and electronic program guides;
• display the icons and indicators on the screen for 15 seconds at the beginning of a program or at any time a button on the remote control is pressed (size of the icon was increased to cover 40 scan lines); and
• establish an Oversight Monitoring Board.

   The Oversight Monitoring Board, already established by the industry, has 24 members: the chair, six people each from the broadcast, cable, and program production communities, and five from the advocacy community. As outlined in the TV Parental Guidelines, the board will inform producers and distributors about the guidelines, handle questions and complaints from the public, explore public attitudes about the system, commission studies on its usefulness, consider changes, and conduct research and evaluation. Its first meeting was scheduled for November 1998.

First Amendment and Other Concerns

   In a statement separate from the FCC order, Commissioner Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth pointed out the constitutional problems. "It cannot be gainsaid that the First Amendment prohibits government from either abridging or compelling protected speech." Furchtgott-Roth noted that by accepting the industry's "voluntary" guidelines the Commission sidestepped the requirements of 303(w) of Section 551, under which the FCC would have had to create a ratings system. "Under the Act, our involvement in programming ratings is now at an end.... This Order should not be interpreted as a basis for future governmental efforts to compel adherence to the industry guidelines at issue in this proceeding" (emphasis in original).

   Furchtgott-Roth's statement underscored the FCC's apparent reluctance to compel NBC and BET, which refused to implement anything other than the age-based system. Furchtgott-Roth wrote: "Forced participation in content-based regulation of speech runs headlong into the First Amendment, as the drafters of Section 551 realized. In this regard I salute the courage and fortitude of those programmers, such as NBC and BET, who have resisted political pressure to effectively convert these voluntary guidelines into mandatory regulations."

   In another separate statement, however, Commissioner Gloria Tristani criticized NBC and BET for making it more difficult to implement the V-chip system. "I am hopeful that all video programming distributors will perceive the public interest in making the V-chip a more effective and easy-to-use tool for parents to block programming that they deem harmful to their children," she wrote.

   The FCC's order makes frequent mention of advocacy groups' concerns but fails to mention concerns broached in comments filed by a coalition of media, education, and civil liberties groups. "The creation of a government ratings system for one medium will embolden those trying to suppress First Amendment-protected material they find 'offensive' to press for further government incursions on our free speech rights," wrote the Media Coalition, representing booksellers, publishers, and other media manufacturers.

   The V-chip issue is by no means settled by the FCC order. Some advocacy groups and members of Congress will continue to press for better compliance with the ratings system as well as more definitive indicators. A study released in September stated that producers were not accurately labeling programs for content, although the industry seemed to be doing better with the age-based ratings. The study was commissioned by the Kaiser Family Foundation and conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara.

   A number of technical developments apparently not anticipated by the Telecommunications Act also promise to raise new issues and concerns. A Maryland firm has announced that it has developed software to allow the blocking of individual segments within a program, raising the question of whether producers could be tasked with rating the 1,100 hours of programming each day scene by scene rather than as an entity. An Arkansas firm has introduced technology that can block individual words or phrases, which may provoke renewed complaints from producers about the integrity of their programs.

   Of particular concern to the TV industry was the announcement this past summer by Thomson Consumer Electronics, the nation's largest seller of TV sets, that it was building into the V-chips the capability of blocking news, sports, commercials, and other unrated programming as an extra benefit for consumers. Other manufacturers were expected to follow suit. Industry officials, anxious about losing revenue and expending more resources on rating even more programming, tentatively agreed to give the unrated programming a TV-G label suitable for all ages; viewers would not see the rating on their screens.