Word: chip
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...done so in a year, the fcc is empowered to set up a panel for creating one. One possible system is currently being tested in Canada. Programs are given a rating of from 0 to 5 in each of three categories: violence, sex and profanity. By setting their V-chip dial to numbers of their choice, parents can block out all shows with higher than that level of offensive material...
...Some V-chip critics see the centralized rating concept as too rigid. They support instead one of several devices currently in development that enable parents to make their own choices of which shows to block out. fcc chairman Reed Hundt, a V-chip booster, contends that it will be only "the first of a slew of products. I predict remote-control devices with selection programs. There will be a variety of ways to receive...
...speech rights. "A centralized rating system that is subject to review and approval by the government is totally inconsistent with the traditions of this country," says NBC general counsel Richard Cotton. "This legislation turns the fcc into Big Brother." Former CBS Broadcast Group president Howard Stringer argues, "The V chip is the thin end of a wedge. If you start putting chips in the television set to exclude things, it becomes an all-purpose hidden censor...
...rhetoric may invoke the First Amendment, but the networks' more pressing concern is the bottom line. The V chip will, inevitably, reduce the potential audience for shows marked with the scarlet letter. That means advertising revenue will go down. What's more, a violence label may scare off many advertisers and thus cause programmers to steer clear of provocative shows. "The thing nobody is taking into account," says Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, "is that there's going to be a V-chip warning on Homicide, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, ER, Chicago Hope--any of the adult dramas that deal...
Whatever its defects, the study could have a major impact as development of the V chip begins. "This is the foundation of any rating system that will be developed," says Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the V chip's original champion in Congress. The irony is that some of the most objectionable shows, in the survey's view, are cartoons and other children's shows: they are the ones that portray violence "unrealistically," without consequences or punishment. "When you show a young kid somebody being run over and they pop back up without harm, that's a problem," says Donnerstein...