Almost from its inception, television has attracted critics concerned with violence portrayed in prime-time and Saturday morning children's programs. Spokesmen for the broadcast industry took the position that television and the violence portrayed on television had no affect on behavior of the viewer. To many this was a strange position for an industry that was also selling commercial time with the specific intent to influence the viewer's purchasing behavior

Both broadcasters and media activists have collected research data on the number of violent acts portrayed during entertainment programming and the effects of viewing television violence. More important, the industry conducted research and subscribed to rating systems to ascertain what people were watching. Numbers were most important because network and station revenues were not impacted by the effects of television, but by the numbers of people of a specific age range (market segment) who were watching television.

As time went on, it became clear to media researchers that no single study that points to television violence as a "cause" of aggressive or violent

Should the Senator be more concerned about the incomes of the broadcasters vs. the cable industry at the expense of our children? He fails to mention that the broadcasters have failed to live up to and, in some cases, even acknowledge their licensed responsibility to children.

· It will be a huge job to rate 300,000 hours a year, plus the programs that are available for re-runs.

· Developing insensibility to violence

There is a need for information about the effects of television violence on people. The broadcast industry has long taken the position that television violence has no effect.

Donald Wildmon president of the American Family Association said the V-chip "sounds like a good step on the surface, but in the long run would absolve the entertainment industry of their responsibility."

Yes, the V-Chip will be able to rate for "acceptable" violence, such as a documentary portrayal of the Civil War. The question will be: Can the entertainment industry be convinced that cartoons need to be rated for violence? Again, it cannot not be over-stressed; the V-Chip is intended to help parents of YOUNG children.

In 1993, Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Pictures Association of America, was an outspoken critic of the V-Chip. In the press conference that followed the industries' meeting with the President, he announced that the industry plans to have a rating system in place by January 1997. He stressed that rating was going to be a "humongous" even Herculean task for the industry. Even after stressing what difficulty the industry would have, he did not let go of the idea that it is the parent who should be the guardian of what a child watches. "There has to be some kind of renaissance of individual responsibility that's accepted by parents, by the church, and by the school so that you build inside a youngster what we call a moral shield-it's fortified by the commandments of God-so that that child understands clearly what is right and what is clearly wrong."

· Some worry that a more detailed rating system could be used by pressure groups to target certain television programs. Advertisers could be forced not to advertise certain rating categories.

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