Recently, thanks to a new rating procedure that seems more complicated, our beloved M-rated cartoons show is now rated TV-PG-L. I guess the L stands for language. This must be a victory for anyone who despised it's resticted rating. I hope this is for real or just a clumsy mistake for Comedy Central
There are some TVs with parental control where you can block off certain channels during any part or all day with a password. I'm not exactly if this is the V-chip or not.
Nope. The V Chip will read ultra-high sounds broadcast with the show that tell the Chip what type of rating the TV show has. The parents will be able to program the chip to block shows that have, say, Sexual Content, and Language, and the parent could ignore Violence.
Hopefully, by the time it's introduced TV Shows will be rated on a scale. from 1 to 5, say:
Language: 4 Sexual Content: 2 Vilence: 3 Portions of a Fat Man's Ass: 5( <-- I made up that one :)
and the parents can choose their scales, but the TV execs are dreadfully opposed to such a system, because, aghast, it will give parents a choice over what their kids see!!
Steve
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I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
Its all just another step in the "Lets make others do the parenting for us" attitude that prevails today.
I sure wouldn't let my kid watch till they were about 13. That's MY decision. The ratings are foolish and a sign of laziness. Parents need to pay attention.
I hope other networks follow in NBC's footsteps and start resiting these ratings. They said no to the 1 letter rating under the TV-(Y-7,G,PG,TV-14,TV-MA) I hope they also use these ratings to show more contraversal(sorry can't think of a better word) TV shows
Watch what, SP? My 13 year old thinks it's great - of course, not that long ago, we were both watching "In Living Color" and "Married With Children" - I don't get the point.
Agreed - but, Jake, we are talking television here - this truly isn't rocket science, y'know.
13?? Children are not as innocent as you'd like to believe <Grin>.
My whole family (including four kids, ages 8, 10, 11, 14) loves SP! The older two get more of the jokes, but there's something in it for every age... Flaming farts were especially hilarious to my eight-year-old!! And we all watch The Spirit of Christmas a couple of times a week. It's a moral imperative.
I suppose on Christmas Eve, we'll have to start reciting SOXMAS instead of "The Night Before Christmas..."
However, we're in desperate need of family counseling. We can't stop talking like Cartman...
13?? Children are not as innocent as you'd like to believe <Grin>.
My whole family (including four kids, ages 8, 10, 11, 14) loves SP! The older two get more of the jokes, but there's something in it for every age... Flaming farts were especially hilarious to my eight-year-old!! And we all watch The Spirit of Christmas a couple of times a week. It's a moral imperative.
I suppose on Christmas Eve, we'll have to start reciting SOXMAS instead of "The Night Before Christmas..."
However, we're in desperate need of family counseling. We can't stop talking like Cartman...
Doh. Wasn't thinking when I was typing. Yeah, that was from last year's SNL season. Sorry to all. Absent mindedness. I was trying to say that was a joke, and not real, but the way it came out, it sounded like I was taking credit. I wasn't trying to, and should have been more aware, and given credit where it was due.
Steve
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If you want to sue somebody, just get a little plastic skeleton and lay it in their yard. Then tell them their ants ate your baby.
Oh, please. If parents don't want their kids to watch a certain show, they can simply NOT LET THEM! This isn't difficult to figure out. Parents shouldn't need the TV to say "no" for them.
That V-chip is bull shit. Its the parents responsibility to stop kids from the "horrors" of television. I think its about time that this stupid issue of tv's devistating effects on children be silenced. Personally, i find it all a waste of time and effort. Screw the ratings and anything else because its all bureucratic bullshit.
Actually the v-chip isn't a tool of censorship; it's a glorified on/off switch. It simply allows parents to screen out programming they feel is inappropriate for their children. Censorship involves the government mandating what can and cannot be seen, not parents making decisions for themselves about what they want their children to see
And as for taxpayer dollars, broadcasters get their airwaves, an invaluable public resource, for _free_. The only requirement the government tacks onto this gift is that broadcasters "serve the public interest." But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the networks are a lot more interested in profits than in the public interest, and the FCC hasn't exactly been strident in enforcing the mandate. It basically boils down to the fact that broadcasters get the best of both worlds, free airwaves with no requirements.
The v-chip could almost be considered a nod to the fact that there's a problem with television, especially where children are concerned, and that neither broadcasters nor the government are willing to fix it. Broadcasters have proved again and again that they are not willing to provide a safe viewing environment for children, and the FCC, for the most part, hasn't required them to (the recent safe harbor ruling is an exception). The v-chip allows parents to do what the government refuses. It's also worth noting that, for agreeing to allow parents the priviledge of determining what their children view, broadcasters demanded 3 years of silence of the subject of children's television from the FCC. And it was granted.
That's what the v-chip does. It lets parents decide.
Actually, one of the problems with television as a medium is that it is uniquely accessible to children. A child can switch on a violent or sexually explicit program when their parents are in the shower, or on the phone, or after they have gone to bed - the v-chip takes away there possibilities. Of course, most parents aren't anywhere near as vigilent as they should be when it comes to what their children watch, and the argument can be made that v-chip will simply make parents lazier and less involved with what their children are viewing. But the simple fact of the matter is that millions of parents already use television as a babysitter. If even of some of these people employ to the v-chip to offer their children a safer viewing environment, its purpose will have been served.
I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to see all the obnoxious debate over breast cancer causes and treatments, or AIDS, or about anything unpleasant disappear. That doesn't mean the govenment should agree to it. Incidentally, don't you find just a little odd that a industry which claims its 1st Amendment rights are being violated every time anyone suggests it should have any regulation at all has demanded absolute silence (complete lack of speech) on a topic? If that's not censorship, I don't know what is.
Yeah, but why stop there? If the V-chip can block things like "adult topics" (like the Ellen episode last week, which received a TV-M rating because Ellen kisses a platonic female friend, quickly and in jest) then I want it to block things like Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell, too. No, I *demand* it! If my partner and I end up with custody of his daughter, I would rather have her see something funny and possibly thought-provoking like Ellen (or for that matter South Park) than hateful right-wing faux-Christian windbags, any day.
In fact, I think there should -- no, MUST -- be a TV-R rating so that my child won't have to be exposed to other people's religions, ways of life, values or anything except our own narrow view of the world. Only then will the children of our great nation be safe, except I guess they'll all have to stay locked in their rooms until they're 18 (or younger, but only if tried and convicted of a crime as an adult) lest they see an offensive image in someone's house or IPU forbid, a TV store.
I guess the *final solution* would be a V-chip that could be easily implanted in the base of children's skulls, which would cause them to go temporarily blind whenever they were exposed to something their parents might possibly find offensive. Then the kids will be safe and the parents can go back to their crack-smoking and Satanic rituals, knowing that government-mandated electronics are ensuring their children's moral purity in the utter absence of any actual parental guidance.
Any child who's mastered basic motor skills can switch on a televison set. I don't mean that parents have no control over their kids, though many of them don't, but that a child has a lot more chance fo stumbing onto an inappropriate program on TV than on the radio, in a book, etc.
Why not? That's like saying we don't need welfare, because private charites should help the poor. Just because they should, doesn't mean they will. Parents use TV as a babysitter. They shouldn't, but they do. And anyway, our society already had goverment mandated parenting tools. What else would you call mandatory school attendance? Or child labor laws? What about child abuse laws? Those are a lot more stringent than a tool which parents can choose for themselves to use or not. Should we repeal all these, because parents should be deciding for themselves? And if not, exactly what the hell is wrong the government providing a tool which could help provide a psychological haven for children who wouldn't get one otherwise? Think this through. I mean, if this is wrong, so are government-sponsered innoculations, for god's sake.
Well, ignoring the fact that I find your indifference to the welfare of the nation's children frightening, exactly what does the number of children in this country have to do with anything? Less than half the people in this country are black, so hell, let's get rid of anti-discrimination laws. Those cost money to enforce too.
I'm glad we will have 3 years without the obnoxious debates over what
First of all, I don't have children. And when I do, I certainly intend to keep a tight reign on what they see and what they don't. But it's pretty damn obvious you don't have children either, especially if you believe that simply telling a child, especially a young child, to do something guarantees that they will do it. But that aside, I agree with you that parents are far too lazy, far too disinterested in things which have a huge effect on their children. The v-chip is a response to that, and to the fact that broadcasters care about proftis, not about children. It is not the cause.
Actually, there's an excellent book on the subject, by former FCC chairmen Newt Minow (of "vast wasteland" fame), and Craig LaMay, called _Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television and the First Amendment_. It covers a lot of things I've been trying to say, a lot more articulately than I've managed to.
Ridiculous analogy. A parent's *first* responsibility is to parent. Charging one's government with taking over that responsibility reeks of totalitarianism, in depriving its citizens of the right to make their own decisions. Welfare (in the purest sense) charges government with caring for whose who can't support themselves and *ask* to be helped. Welfare is not forced upon anyone, as government control of TV content would be.
What's wrong is that it removes our freedoms and homogenizes the result. Governments that control what people read and hear produce brain-dead societies -- societies that command no loyalty or respect, societies that its citizens seek to escape.
It's a hell of a stretch to call these "parenting tools." Just because a law references an age limit does not means it's about parenting. School attendance produces an educated populace (or should); child labor and child abuse laws minimize the effects of society's exploitative nature. They don't tell parents how to *parent*; they merely prohibit specific abuses.
Pot calling kettle black. Your view on this topic is not being *censored*; you're free to say whatever you like. Your view is being *disagreed with*, and the First Amendment offers you no protection there.
It's you who's proposing censorship, defined as the official restriction of free expression. And you're apparently doing so because you don't think parents' responsibilities should have to extend as far as they do. That sounds like a pretty *lazy* attitude, one that could endanger a lot of the other responsibilities you may face if and when you choose to reproduce.
............................................................ It's (v-chip) just a device that lets lazy-ass parents (who shouldn't even be parents if their own time is that important), become even lazier-ass parents. I am a parent (she's 18 now) - I did fine without this stuff, but I was willing to spend the time with my daughter as she was growing up. She was my #1 priority in life (yes - #1 - over my job, my social life, everything). Sadly, too many 'parents' are more concerned with their own lives and retirement, etc. to spend the necessary time with their children when they are young. These are usually the same people who blame the teachers, television, etc. for their childs problems.
So, yeah, since (sad fact of life) there are so many selfish, self-centered 'parents' in the world, the v-chip should help somewhat. That is, assuming that the parents can take a few moments out of their busy lives to figure out how to program the damm thing!
On Mon, 13 Oct 1997 14:49:09 -0500, [email] (Rachel R. George) shared with the class, in part:
So what's wrong with insisting that parents take responsibility and not be so lazy? Nobody said that broadcasters have to care about children. They have a business to run. Period. Their job is not to parent.