4.3 - High Tech Options for Parental Content Control

A Blues Brothers poster, framed diplomas, awards, and bookshelves covered the beige walls of Tim Collings’ office at Simon Fraser University in Canada where he taught engineering. He looked up from reviewing reports when someone came in and told Tim there had just been shootings at a similar engineering school, the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. It was December of 1989. Fourteen women were killed and thirteen women injured, after Marc Lepine, who was denied entrance to the school, went on a rampage with a semi-automatic rifle. The carnage ended when Lepine turned the gun on himself.

After hearing the news, Tim went in search of a television. He got up from his L-shaped desk, passed the wall of books, and walked into the main engineering lab. This big 5,000 square foot lab room was out his office door, and he walked though it—past tables full of various electrical equipment, including power supplies, electric oscilloscopes, and digital multimeters that people were using for research and development—and into a video conferencing room on other side of lab where there was a television. He was horrified as he watched the reports of the massacre.

The shootings deeply affected Tim, “It was a shocking thing you don’t expect to happen—this man walked into a lecture room with a machine gun and at the end of the day there were fourteen students killed and then he shot himself.” Tim listened to updates on the radio, watched the news, and later read reports. Everyone was asking, “Why?” including Tim.

Then Tim read the report detailing the fact that searchers found a library of violent video material in the murderer’s apartment. There were a number of news stories about connections between increased violence and media consumption. Something clicked for Tim.

As an engineer and inventor, Tim knew how to bring ideas into reality. “If you’re an inventor you come across problems every day and start thinking about solutions—this thing popped out to me as a problem,” recalls Tim. Tim figured there are two ways to help stem the tide of increasingly violent media into homes: The first is censorship that eliminates violence at the source. The second lets the viewers decide what they allow into their homes. Tim took the second approach.

Figuring out that broadcasters could include age-appropriate rating information in television transmissions (in the same way close caption text for the hearing impaired was already included); he developed a device to receive these program rating codes that could be built into television sets and act as a filter based on user preference. This idea turned into the V-chip. It took Tim about six months to develop a prototype and over a decade to deal with corporate and government policies to get the rating and filtering system up and running.

Tim’s invention from Canada is closely tied to the United States because, as he says, “We passed similar regulations in Canada, but the consumer electronics association which is the umbrella organization that coordinates television manufacturers has headquarters in Washington, D.C. So if you want to deal with the television manufacturers then you have to go through D.C. because North America is really one entity, and most products that get into Canada go through the United States.”

Dealing with the manufacturers was essential in order to get the V-chip integrated into each newly made television. Tim comments, “The FCC in the United States has a lot more clout and when they put legislation in place that restricts the sale of televisions without V-chips then it really has to happen.” His strategy was that if he could get the FCC to require V-chips in televisions, then the television manufacturers and broadcasters would use the same systems in Canada. His strategy paid off. By lobbying the United States Congress and FCC he was able to pass requirements for the V-chip system that were also implemented in his home country.

V-chips are now incorporated into all new televisions manufactured since 2000.¹⁷ The television program rating system from which the V-chip gets its information is also up and running. Federal law now mandates that almost all television shows are rated so the viewing public can determine what they want showing in their homes. The ratings designations are: TV-Y (all children); TV-Y7 (age 7 and above); TV-G (general audience); TV-PG (parental guidance suggested); TV-14 (parents strongly cautioned); TV-MA (mature audiences only).¹⁸ These designations can be used with the V-chip as a filter, or to select appropriate programming in real time.¹⁹

There is a high degree of consumer confusion about media rating designations. With different rating systems for television, video games, movies, and other media this isn’t surprising. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found very few parents of young children, less than half of those surveyed, understand the television ratings for their child’s age group (TV-Y7 and TV-Y). And even fewer parents understand the content-based rating designations: Only 5 percent knew the D rating was for suggestive dialogue, while 62 percent knew V is for violence.²⁰ On top of this problem is the fact that many of the ratings for individual programs are inaccurate: A University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health study published in May of 2005 found the number of violent acts in a movie wasn’t always correlated with the rating the movie was given.²¹ Clearly we need an independent uniform rating system with consistent content categories that crosses all media to avoid parental confusion and allow better consumer choices.

Another important issue is that very few people know they have a high tech content controlling tool, the V-chip, in their household. A survey in 2001 found that while 40 percent of families owned a television with a V-chip, only 17 percent were actually using it. This is, in part, because most families with V-chips in their televisions don’t even know they have one (53 percent). Of those that do know, substantially less than half use it.²² Educating more parents how to use the V-chip can help parents control what’s showing in their living rooms.

Tim notes that the V-chip is fairly easy to use with a regular remote control. “You don’t need anything special. Take your remote control and use the menu button. If you push the menu button then you’ll see a number of different controls—in most sets, all new sets now, there is selection for parental controls and those controls at the minimum will allow you to set certain ratings, and some also have channel blocking and time allowances.”

New technologies like the V-chip give parents some ability to control the television content shown in their own homes. Other devices that allow parents to choose the programs available to their children include lock boxes, which are available from cable companies and allow people to lock out unwanted channels, and digital set-top boxes, which often have increased abilities to block programs based on information like ratings, program titles, and time.²³

Another way for individuals to control the television programming available in their homes is to allow people to simply pay for the channels they want to watch, and not pay for those they would have blocked. Many people call this “a la carte” program selection, or unbundling cable packages. Right now, people generally buy cable packages that come with several preselected channels together in one bundle. There is a movement to “unbundle” cable packages, i.e. allow people to buy only the channels they want in an a la carte fashion. While this option has been proposed by a wide variety of groups, from liberal-leaning consumer groups to conservative decency groups, it’s not yet available to consumers.

In 2004, U.S. Senator John McCain sponsored a bill that would have forced cable companies to have a la carte options available. Consumers still could buy bundled packages, but the option would be there for purchasing individual channels. The a la carte option is remarkably simple for consumers, but it’s rife with controversy mainly because cable companies are worried about how it will impact their bottom line. For this, and a number of other reasons, the 2004 effort failed.

Activists remain interested in continuing forward on this path, however. Josh Silver, Executive Director of Free Press, notes, “The real goal of a la carte is to ensure people, not cable companies, can decide what channels they receive and pay for in their homes. This is important because 98 percent of people in the U.S. only have the choice of one cable provider in the area, mainly because cable companies are inherently monopolistic due to the nature of the technology.”

Tim agrees that unbundling cable channels, or a la carte options, are part of the wave of the future. “It only makes sense for the industry to go that way at one point.” And, he notes, “The big future is IP (internet protocol) television where everything goes over the internet so your cable company or phone company would now be able to distribute video programming over the same connection. This will involve a more targeted reception of programming because there will be millions of program options that aren’t time based. There could still be V-chip type codes in the data to help sort.”

Often though, the time spent watching TV is more of a problem than the content. A fairly simple solution to both those issues is to simply turn off the television and do something else.