Media and Television - Analysis of the V-Chip

The V-Chip and TV Parental Guidelines

During the last decade, media ratings have been used as a means of addressing concerns about "objectionable" or potentially harmful media content. Politicians, entertainment industry leaders, and parents alike have turned to media ratings as a "middle ground" to such concerns somewhere between direct government censorship and not addressing the issue at all. While movie ratings have been in place for several decades, there was a trend in adoption of a rating system for media such as television. The advent of content blocking categories technologies, such as the V-chip, which requires some form of attendant rating system to be useful, has furthered spurred this trend. There is substantial evidence that shows that the rating system together with the V-chip is not going to be beneficial to the audience it hopes to protects, the children.

The V-chip, violence chip is an electronic chip which works in conjunction with your television, VCR, cable box or stand alone retrofit device was invented by Tim Collings, an instructor in electronics and computer engineering at Simon Fraser University. (Monagan,!997, p.A9)

Parents can choose to utilize the V-chip feature by selecting a rating level that they see fit for their children. V-chip reads the transmitted rating code for all programming and will automatically deny access to programming that exceeds their preset rating limitations. It does by intercepting a rating code transmitted by broadcasters analogous to the Motion Picture Industry Association of America's that has been used for almost thirty years. The rating for each show would be electronically encoded in the black area of the bro...

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...y go along with the myth that the V-chip and Parental Guidelines will shield their children against television violence.

Work Cited

Belafante, Gina. (1995) Locking out violence: support growing grows for V-chip as way to protect young viewers. Time v146 pg64.

Cantor Joanne. (1998) Ratings for Programs: The role of research findings. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science v557 pg54

Dickson, Amy. (199) The V-chip arrives: It can help parents monitor kids' TV viewing. But there is a low-tech way to do the same thing. Time v154 p80.

Gunther, Marc. (1998) The bureaucrats' favorite gizmo. Fortune v137 pg. 64

Rarey Matthew A. (1999) V-chip Investment. Insight on the News v15 pg41.

Monagan Peter (1997) The scientist behind the V-chip. The Chronicle of Higher Education v44 pA9