Television Rating Systems, Parental Uses of

In January 1997, the nation's telecasters introduced a television program rating system in the United States. Under considerable congressional pressure, the industry volunteered to provide onscreen information as to the suitability of programs for different age groups. Two ratings categories were adopted for children's programs (one for all children and one for children 7 and above), and four categories were created for nonchildren (TV-G for general audiences, TV-PG where parental guidance was recommended, TV-14 for shows intended for viewers 14 and older, and TV-MA for mature audiences). In October 1997, under further pressure, the rating system added content labels for sex, violence, suggestive dialogue, and adult language. Television networks have no common standard for assigning ratings to television programs. Each network or production unit creates and applies its own definitions.

A series of national surveys of parents of 2-to-17-year-olds by the Kaiser Family Foundation, taken in 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2004, provide the most comprehensive description of public acceptance and use of the TV ratings. One year into the ratings, 57% of the national sample of parents said they had not seen or read anything that explained the ratings and what they meant, although four fifths had heard of them. More telling, 18% of the parents had never heard anything about such ratings, and 27% who were aware of them reported that they never or hardly ever used them. These parents also exaggerated their understanding of the system. The study indicates that among parents who say they understand the ratings very well, only one fourth are actually well informed when tested as to the symbols' meanings. One year later, half of the parents still did not use the TV ratings [Page 824]information, although more than 80% said they used the movie ratings.

In its 2001 survey, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported parental use still at near the halfway mark (56%), but that figure was much higher than the 7% of parents who used the V-chip in their TV monitor. Half of the parents surveyed said they used the parental advisories on CDs and music tapes, and 59% used the information on video games. In this study, 3 years after the ratings system was initiated, two thirds could not spontaneously name a specific TV rating, 69% could not correctly indicate what TV-Y meant, 53% could not explain TV-MA, 95% could not explain the content label D, and only 52% could correctly state that S stood for sexual content. Furthermore, half the parents sampled did not agree that the ratings accurately reflected the shows' content.

Findings in its 2004 survey do not alter these earlier findings substantially: Even among parents who have used the ratings, 60% believe they are not accurate some or most of the time.

This latter issue of relative accuracy was addressed by Kunkel and his colleagues in a 2001 study. They systematically examined 1,147 TV programs for “high-risk” violent and sexual behaviors, for example, extensive, serious, explicit violence or intercourse, sexual assault, and explicit nudity. About 10% of the shows the researchers looked at qualified as high-risk violent and 4% as high-risk sexual. Only one fourth of the high-risk violent shows contained a rating as strong as TV-14. There was no V label on fully 65% of the general audience programs that the research scheme identified as containing violent-risk content. In the subset of children's programming, more than two thirds of all high-risk violent shows carried a TV-Y label—suitable for children of all ages. Half of the high-risk sexual shows had a TV-14 rating, but 80% of these shows contained no S designation. The research findings argued for the lack of symmetry between the TV ratings provided by the industry and the actual program content.

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