The Idiot Chip

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   The New York Times, February 10, 1996


   The Idiot Chip

   By Frank Rich [Columnist]
    
     
   In the annals of dumb solutions to serious problems,
   history will have a ball with the V-chip, the antidote to
   trash TV that became the law of the land on Thursday when
   Bill Clinton signed the telecommunications bill. Far from
   making television safer for children, the V-chip will
   merely postpone and confuse the issue until well into the
   next century -- even as it provides politicians with
   convenient cover.

   By embracing the V-chip, Democrats and Republicans alike
   can posture as if they care about children without actually
   having to do anything to improve their cultural lot.

   Let Mr. V-chip do the job instead!

   The V-chip is a gimmick that has as much to do with
   ameliorating TV for kids as the Forbes flat tax has to do
   with serious tax reform.

   To see why, it's essential to realize that a cultural
   revolution took place in America this week.

   Contrary to the headlines and sound bites, the new
   telecommunications law is not just about cable rates and
   phone service, the explosion of new technologies and the
   unconstitutional effort to stamp out "indecency" and
   abortion information on the Internet.

   If you look at the bigger picture, this law is also about
   a mammoth expansion of mass culture -- more media, more
   outlets -- and a rapid expansion of power for the handful
   of mega-corporations that control it all, from TV, movies,
   music and publishing to both print and electronic news. It
   was perfectly symbolic that on the day Mr. Clinton signed
   the bill, Disney got its official Federal approval to
   swallow up ABC.

   Into this vast new universe of omnipotent media goliaths
   comes the tiny V-chip, designed to help parents block the
   coarse outpourings of an exploding digital universe.

   Common sense alone dooms this gizmo to failure.
  
   Who can rate some 600,000 hours of programming broadcast
   per year by even our current 70-channel cable systems?
   (Hollywood only has to rate roughly 550 movies -- 1,000
   hours -- per year.) Should crime-sated local news be
   blocked? "MASH" reruns? Reports from a future gulf war?
   "E.R."? Pro football? "Schindler's List"? (If so, a network
   may be tempted to duck a V-chip block -- which would lower
   ratings and revenue -- by sanitizing the Holocaust.)

   Even if all the practical, political and legal questions
   raised by the V-chip could be miraculously resolved
   overnight, it is still pie-in-the-sky. The chips are only
   required on new TV sets, so it will be years before most
   households, especially multi-set households, will be in the
   V-chip's harness.

   Even then, parents with kids in different age groups will
   have to choose between their younger and older children as
   they decide whether to flick the switch each night. Weaker
   parents will take the same path of least resistance they do
   now.

   As the founder of Action for Children's Television, Peggy
   Charren has been fighting for kids decades longer than most
   politicians.

   She is not only skeptical that the V-chip will transform
   lax parents into concerned ones, but points out that the
   chip doesn't even address the Saturday morning blight of
   brainwashing commercials ("worse than the programming") for
   violent toys and junk food.

   Nor, Ms. Charren adds, is there any language in the
   telecommunications law to require networks to increase the
   quantity and quality of good children's TV that might offer
   an after-school alternative to "Jenny Jones."

   Mr. Clinton will press for better programming when he meets
   with Hollywood potentates -- some of whom are his campaign
   contributors -- at the White House on Feb. 29. A far
   tougher idea -- one adopted by the British Government last
   month -- is being promoted by the Media Access Project, a
   public-interest organization.

   It argues that the one gift the networks still want from
   Congress and didn't get in the telecommunications law --
   more space on the public airwaves (so-called "spectrum")
   for additional channels -- be given only if they agree to
   cede some of it to public-service broadcasting, including
   top-notch children's TV.

   But the greedy media goliaths will fight any such proposal
   as vehemently as they oppose the V-chip.

   The politicians, hiding behind the V-chip, will let them
   get away with it.

   Delinquent parents, told that their children will soon be
   in the hands of an electronic nanny, will have a new excuse
   for doing nothing.

   And like each TV generation before it, today's children
   will grow up to fight this battle for their children on yet
   another day.

   [End]