What do NAB Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan, Motion Picture Association Sr. Executive VP and Global General Counsel Karyn Temple, and NCTA-The Internet & Television Association Chief Legal Officer Russell Hanser have in common?
The three disparate organizations all agree on how the FCC should proceed in MB Docket No. 19-41, focused on the TV Parental Guidelines age ratings system.
In joint comments, the NAB, NCTA and MPA agree with the Media Bureau that parents “must be empowered to make informed choices when it comes to the type of television programs that are appropriate for their children.”
And, they argue, the Monitoring Board and the voluntary TV Parental Guidelines are doing just that.
“Indeed, the Guidelines are a widely recognized, well understood, and broadly used tool to help parents and caregivers make informed decisions about the television programs their children watch,” the three groups note, adding that the television industry “carefully
developed this decades-old TV ratings system and continues to seek feedback from
stakeholders and refine ratings practices.”
In fact, they state, since 2019 the Monitoring Board has implemented new practices designed to improve the transparency of the Board and the accuracy and consistency of TV ratings across television, cable, and streaming platforms. These include annual reports, a Streaming Task Force, and a Spot Check Review Program.
Still, the groups note, ratings are just one tool in modern parents’ and caregivers’ toolkit.
As such, the TV Parental Guidelines “continue to provide an effective tool to help parents and caregivers to make informed viewing choices about age-appropriate programming.” And, the trio of groups note, “The Monitoring Board plays a vital role in fostering consistent TV ratings across broadcast, cable, and streaming platforms. The Board is committed to continuing working diligently to further promote consistency and transparency in ratings and support public understanding of the TV ratings system.”
Meanwhile, Tech Freedom in its own comments flat-out believes the FCC has no authority to ask or act on its query regarding potential changes to the current ratings system.
“How lawful content is labeled is a matter for private actors to decide, not the government,” says the group led by President Berin Szóka. “The Commission has no authority for this inquiry. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed the Commission to create TV ratings guidelines for sexual, violent, or other indecent material only if it found, within one year, that the television industry had failed to adopt an adequate voluntary ratings system—a finding it never made. While agencies can typically revisit past decisions, this law gave the Commission only a narrow, one-time authority to make a specific finding within a specific time window. If Congress had intended the Commission to have discretion to revisit this question, to trigger an amendment to the U.S. Code years or even decades later, it would have said so—expressly.”
