Information rage: rating the TV raters.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick

Our seemingly interminable national soap opera about the urgent need to "clean up" TV - to make the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers settle disputes with their heads rather than their hands, to make NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz keep his clothes on, to make Beavis and Butt-head stop playing with matches - has entered its final absurdist episode. While the actual program categories proposed by the television industry may change, it is absolutely clear that, in one form or another, "voluntary" TV ratings are here to stay. After all, they are mandated by the same federal legislation that will bring V-chips to new television sets beginning in 1998.

It is similarly clear that the camera-hogging politicians, outraged children's advocacy groups, and tongue-clucking editorial boards who have championed government regulation of television feel that viewers are tasteless boobs desperately in need of expert guidance only they can provide. Such thinking explains the chorus of boos that greeted the television industry's new age-based rating system.

Using the Motion Picture Association of America's movie ratings as a guide, an industry commission led by MPAA head Jack Valenti created six categories: TV-Y (appropriate for all children), TV-Y7 (unsuitable for kids under seven), TV-G (general audiences), TV-PG (parental guidance suggested), TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under 14), and TV-M (mature audiences only). Broadcast and cable networks will be responsible for rating whatever they choose to air, with only news and sports programming exempt. These ratings will be used in conjunction with the V-chip when it becomes commercially available.

Critics claim that an age-based system, rather than a content-based one that explicitly rates shows on sex, violence, and language, lacks the truly meaningful information that will best let viewers bypass shows sight unseen. Hence, Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) rips the ratings as "a toothless system that tells parents nothing about whether a show contains violence, sexual content or profanity."

"The industry plan...offers even less information than [some] cable programmers...already provide," opines USA Today. "There's no reason why this information can't be made available," declares Tim Collings of Canada's Simon Fraser University and the creator of the V-chip. (Ironically, Canada's own content-based system has been pulled as unworkable and unreliable in rating the 600,000 or so programs Hollywood produces in a given...