Leave Room to Improve V-Chip, Ratings

I invented the V-chip after the 1989 Montreal shootout in which a man, whose apartment was later found to contain violent videos, killed 14 students. So I feel somewhat responsible for the present debate and controversy surrounding the V-chip and television ratings (“Content Ratings Intended as a Guide for Parents,” Counterpunch, Aug. 18, and “Ratings for Content or Control?”, Counterpunch, Aug. 4).

The modern television is a marvel of enforced stupidity. The technology has remained essentially unchanged since Federal Communications Commission-licensed broadcasts began in 1941. Our challenge today is to manage a wealth of choice using only an on-off switch and a channel selector. It’s a bit like opening up a reference textbook to find a topic, only without using the index.

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But two forces have emerged to inspire innovation to bring some discipline to television viewing--the demand for improved selection of programs and the demand for intelligent filtering of programs spawned by concerns over increasingly explicit material. The V-chip could change the way we watch TV by delivering program choice information to us in the most efficient manner possible--through the television channel itself. Sure, you can still consult your newspaper listings if you want to, but, in the “Information Age,” it makes more sense to send this information over the same path as the program. The V-chip is an enabling technology that allows viewers to use electronic program information to make viewing decisions easier and, if you wish, automatic.

I designed the V-chip to enable discretion and encourage “positive option” viewing. But the revised U.S. rating system that takes effect Oct. 1 identifies content largely on its “harmful” qualities: whether violence, sex, bad language or suggestive dialogue is present. What it does not describe is whether there is anything informative or uplifting about a particular program, such as whether it includes educational content.

Efforts have been made and should continue to be made to develop “edifying” labels that parents could use to choose these types of programs, keying them into the TV to catch, rather than kill, the broadcast.

The recent agreement between broadcasters (NBC notwithstanding), legislators and children’s advocacy groups on a unified content classification system for television appears to represent the triumph of a simple technological solution over a complex social problem. Or does it? In reaching an agreement, legislators have promised the broadcast industry a three-year moratorium on legislative action requiring changes to the system. This promise could prevent improvements to the system, at least until the moratorium has expired.

A special educational designation should be the very first rating on the scale. Additional program information should be transmitted to provide enhanced viewing capabilities and improvements to the system. So what’s the problem? Market forces and consumer demand will conspire to ensure that information flow is improved, the technology evolves and the system eventually becomes better, right? Maybe not.

The Electronics Industry Assn. has been charged by the FCC to provide a technical standard for implementing the V-chip. The association’s membership, dominated by television manufacturers and broadcasters, has a built-in incentive to declare a fixed standard that would prevent future improvements to the system.

This fixed standard is by no means a technological necessity. There are several ways that a flexible standard can be implemented.

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In Canada, we have successfully tested a flexible system and have been using this technology for the past four years. It was necessary to design this flexibility into the V-chip because our classification and information system improved during testing from 1993-97, and it reflects my desire to use TV to transmit, rather than block, information flow.

It becomes important, then, that the moratorium promised by legislators has real meaning. Legislators and the FCC must ensure that, however the V-chip is implemented, there must be a technological opening for further improvement to the system if changes are needed (once the moratorium has expired).

It becomes imperative that the public (through legislators), the FCC and the media be vigilant of industry executives having the final say on how the V-chip technology is implemented. If a fixed standard is declared, a moratorium will be meaningless, and future improvements to the technology will be impossible.