Beginning this fall, the networks will broadcast parental advisories before excessively violent programs and send similar warnings to newspapers and magazines that carry TV listings. (The most likely wording: “Due to some violent content, parental discretion advised.”) As a pre-emptive strike, the announcement accomplished its mission. Many in Congress, roused by the soaring tide of prime-time gore, have been threatening federally imposed reforms. Some of those restrictions however, would surely raise howls from First Amendment guardians, which may explain the almost palpable “whew” with which lawmakers greeted the networks’ voluntary action. “I welcome these moves and applaud the decision makers,” gushed Sen. Paul Simon, one of the industry’s sharpest critics on the Hill.
Yet as the parental-alert plan came into clearer focus, so did all its flaws. Television drama has always shied from irony. but this one seems inescapable. In selling their own reform package, the networks provided another reminder of just how unstaunchable TV’s blood flow remains. “This problem will get worse because people will think something has been done about it,” says Dr. Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist who heads the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV). “But all they’re doing is applying a Band-Aid. It’s just a sham.”
For openers, the networks will decide for themselves which shows require warning flags. The plan also assumes the presence of a parent both to catch the warnings and to switch the channel. That ignores the millions of children of working parents who watch TV unsupervised (not to mention the nearly 50 percent between 6 and 17 who own bedroom sets). In fact, similar warning systems notably, the recording industry’s attempt to label explicit lyricstend to achieve the opposite effect. “The advisories are just a faster road map to the violent material,” says Terry Rakolta, founder of Americans for Responsible Television. “Kids channel surfing will stop immediately and say, ‘Hey, this is it! We don’t even have to look for it’. “What’s more, both cable and syndicated programs, where the body counts run highest, remain exempt–as do children’s cartoons, indicted by some studies as TV’s most violent genre. Where applied, the advisories may even make things worse. Broadcasters, proposes Boston anti-violence activist William Abbott, “could use the warning system as a license to show programs that are even more violent-just because they’ve warned parents.”
Network executives contend that any form of violence alert will drive off gun-shy viewers and advertisers. “Some will be pleased at that,” says CBS president Howard Stringer. “But then all drama will vanish from network television.” Millions of other viewers, the networks maintain, will tune out if they can’t satisfy their appetite for violence. “Nightmare in Columbia County, “a made-for-CBS docu-drama of a serial killer, finished third in the Nielsens last month-and that was a reran. Yet there’s equally formidable evidence that video mayhem may be losing its sales appeal. At the start of the 1992 season, the, NU” compiled a list of TV’s 10 “most violent” series. Today, only one (ABC’s “The Commish”) has survived Nielsen’s verdict. A recent Times Mirror poll showed a remarkable jump-from 49 to 72 percent over the last decade-in the number of Americans who consider the tube unduly violent.
Of course, defining video violence remains as dicey as curbing it. NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield likes to divide it all into good violence and bad violence. “Good violence is dealing responsibly with things like substance abuse, incest, date rape, maniacal cult leaders, the Civil War and the Holocaust,” he says. And the bad? “The glamorization of acts of violence.” Uh-uh; it’s more than that. It’s portraying violence with a total absence of consequences. It’s rewarding a protagonist for violent deeds and never showing remorse. It’s telling TVs most impressionable constituency that violence is clean, cool and natural. Most of all, it’s sledgehammering violence into the growing-up process. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, the average child will witness 8,000 made-for-TV murders before finishing elementary school.
In adopting parental advisories, the networks have taken a modest first step-when what may be needed is a giant leap. Few agree more strongly than Rep. Edward J. Markey, chairman of the House’s powerful telecommunications subcommittee, who’s pressing for the installation of a so-called “V block” computer chip in new TV sets. This would allow parents, after checking the coming week’s TV listings, to block all programs carrying a V rating from the gaze of their children. While the technology is ready, not everyone is eager for it-especially if, as some propose, the chip comes programmed to automatically zap V-rated shows. “That’s getting awfully close to censorship,” frets Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children’s Television.
The entire video-violence issue will be thrashed out at an unprecedented, industry-wide summit conference in Los Angeles on Aug. 2. Hopefully, at least one brave voice will cite the most depressing news of all: the nation’s nightly dose of gore, reports the American Academy of Pediatrics, tripled just during the 1980s. Maybe it’s finally time for the medium to heed the Terry Rakoltas. “We don’t want warning labels,” she fumes. “We want a reduction in television violence.” That, of course, will happen only when those who control what we see turn their attention to a different form of PR: not public relations, but public responsibility.
A study of the 1991-92 television season
shows that children’s programming actually features more violence than prime time.
CHILDREN’S PRIME PROGRAMS TIME Violent acts per hour 32 4 Violent characters 56% 34% Characters who are victims of violence 74% 34% Characters who are killers or who get killed 3.3% 5.7% Characters involved in violence as perpetrators or victims 79% 47%
SOURCE: PROF. GEORGE GERBNER ANNENBERG SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATIONS UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight on April 2,1992, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox, WDCA-Washing-ton, Turner, USA, MTV and HBO combined aired the following carnage:
ACT NUMBER OF PERCENT SCENES OF TOTAL Serious assaults (without guns) 389 20% Gunplay 362 18% Isolated punches 273 14% Pushing, dragging 272 14% Menacing threat with a weapon 226 11% Slaps 128 6% Deliberate destruc- tion of property 95 5% Simple assault 73 4% All other types 28 1%
SOURCE: CENTER FOR MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, JUNE 1992
