White shadows and gibberish
by Matt Worley

If you've been watching TV for the last week or so, you might have noticed something new. No, not better sit-com jokes or dramatic plot twists (TV was still in the "holiday re-run" part of the season, so the content was not new.), but a strange white shadow in the upper left hand corner of the screen. If you regularly tune in late to shows, you may have missed it. If you have bad tunnel vision and sit real close to the TV, it may have escaped your notice as well. But there it was on the first day of the new year. A small, standardized TV rating for network shows.

A few years ago (and it seems like it could have been in that hazy time when Beavis & Butthead first appeared on the small screen, but it may have been a bit later) politicians began to get really pissed about television. There was all that graphic depiction of murder and mayhem. There were underhanded sex jokes. There was the possibility of seeing a bare bum or curve of the breast. And there was a dream. It was called the V-chip. The V, of course, stood for "Victory" over immoral actions on TV (or maybe it was violence...whatever). Action was called for. Postures were discovered. Pictures were taken. And TV got scared--okay, it didn't.

What happened was shows like "NYPD Blue" and the "X-Files" occasionally had an ominous message of potential graphic material appear before the show aired. Anytime VH-1 had a special with The Artist (formerly known as Prince), the audience was warned. Stephen King mini-series were also afflicted with this type of hype, but rarely were they anything as scary as the original printed form. But the actual V-chip never appeared. Best Buy and Circuit City never advertised the big 32-inch TV with V-chip installed (just $999!). And then last month something happened.

After years of research, a TV rating system was announced. There were various ratings that meant anyone could watch without harm (TV-Everyone, TV-All, TV-Kid, TV-Moron) and then TV-PG, TV-14 and TV-M. Since these ratings are meant for commercial TV, they do not (in any way) correspond to movie ratings of similar type. You can't say the bad doo-doo word in TV-PG shows (which most sit-coms and dramas are lumped into), and you can't say the F-word or show actual nudity (the NIPPLE!) on TV-M shows (although if you watch the VH-1 Fashion Awards, there are a couple instances where Shirley Manson of Garbage displays her bare right breast--NIPPLE INCLUDED! oh my...).

These ratings, actually, do nothing except freak out parents who don't watch the same shows as their kids. The content hasn't changed, and it is possible that the rating system itself may hasten commercial TV's acceptance of certain words, gestures and body parts, since they are being rated much like the movies now. Because almost everything other than Saturday morning cartoons and re-runs of "Full House" is rated TV-PG (I have yet to watch a show rated anything else), it's hard to imagine this labeling is helping anyone.

The ratings, in politicians minds, help pave the way for V-chip technology. What they don't realize is that the technology has existed for quite a while. It would employ the same type of encoding Closed Captioning uses, except an enabled V-chip would blank out the screen instead of displaying text. As a matter of fact, when our family had a satellite dish (not the piddly 18-inchers of today, but the big eight foot jobbies), a block out system was installed to make sure we didn't see the bad channels. We had the system beat in a day. So where are those special V-chip enabled TVs and stand-alone block out boxes? Why didn't the industry push that stuff during the mega-buying holiday season? And why is partial nudity on "NYPD Blue" still shown as a fuzzy still-life picture?

These are the questions that have to be answered before anything approaching significance comes out of the little white shadow in the left hand corner of the screen. And then there is this little fact to throw in. The same amount of people bought "Independence Day" on video as the average viewership of "E.R." or "Seinfeld" on a given week. And that movie will be edited when it is shown on network TV. So does the average person even give a **Movie-PG** anyway?

Matt Worley lives in a town where the local ABC station won't show "Politically Incorrect" and also won't give an explanation for its blackout. He's thinking about buying a gun.

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