Ratings for Television Programs
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 contained a "Parental Choice in Television Programming" provision designed to permit parents greater control over the content seen on their home televisions. This provision passed in response to the accumulating evidence that television violence and other types of programming can have profound negative effects on the mental health of children, and in response to parental concerns about the increasingly violent and sexual content of television. The act mandated that within a specified time of its passage, new televisions be manufactured with a "V-chip," which would allow parents to block objectionable content on the basis of the rating of a program. It also recommended that the television industry develop a voluntary rating system that would be applied to television programs and be readable by the V-chip technology. Early in 1996, shortly after passage of the act, entertainment industry executives formed a Ratings Implementation Group and agreed to develop a rating system. The new system was released to the public on December 19, 1996, and began being implemented in January 1997.
The rating system is designed to be applied to all programming with the exception of news and sports programs. In addition to being read by the V-chip, the rating of a program (selected by thatprogram's producers or distributors) is displayed visually in the upper left-hand corner of the television screen for the first few seconds of a program.
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