The V Chip essay by Henrietta Cupples

The V Chip The V-Chip Americas Answer to Desensitizing On February 8, 1996, President Clinton1 signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 19962, which will dramatically alter the telecommunications industry over the next several years. One of the most controversial sections of the bill was Section 551, titled Parental Choice in Television Programming, which calls for manufacturers to include a V-chip in every new TV set 13 inches or larger. The V-chip is a device that will enable viewers to program their televisions to block out content with a common rating. Proponents of the system say that it will enable parents to protect their children from viewing violent and explicit material. Opponents say it violates the First Amendment rights of the broadcasters, and enforces government censorship on the television industry.

The provision gives broadcasters, cable operators, and other video distributors one year to develop a voluntary rating system for programming that contains sexual, violent, or other indecent material. If the industry fails to agree on a rating system within that time, the FCC is to develop a rating system based on an advisory board's recommendations.16 The Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 19903 required all new televisions sold in the United States to contain a chip to decode closed-captioning4 signals. The basic technology needed to implement the V-chip is the same as that currently used for closed-captioning. Program rating information would be transmitted along with the television signal, and be decoded by a chip in each television. The chip would then compare the rating codes to values preset by the viewer.

If the rating codes are higher than the preset values, the television signal would be blocked, and a blank screen would be displayed. Closed-captioning data is transmitted on line 21 of the vertical blanking interval, or VBI5. The VBI consists of 24 lines of a regular picture scan in which the beam is turned off to return to the top of the screen before painting the next frame. These 24 lines represent dead air time, in which no image information is sent.

5 Each line of the VBI is capable of transmitting 256 bits (32 bytes) of data. Since the VBI appears once per frame, or 30 times per second, this means that each line of the VBI is capable of sustaining a bit rate of 7680 bits per second.5 The tentative plan for implementing the V-chip is to add the program rating information to line 21 of the VBI, along with the closed-captioning information.The difficulty is that line 21 is also being used for newer extended data services (XDS) that will be capable of providing such things as scheduling information and station call letters to the viewers. Fitting all three of these data signals into the 7.68 kbps of line 21 is one of the primary difficulties in designing the V-chip implementation.

12 The magnitude of the problem will be determined by the complexity of the rating system chosen by the broadcasters. If a relatively simple rating scheme is used, small modifications could be made to the existing closed-captioning decoders to receive the rating data and block the programs. This would require no change in the architecture of the televisions, and would be almost free of cost to install. Electronic Industries Association6 (EIA) engineer, Tom Mock, says that the existing closed-captioning chips have enough memory to support a system of up to three content categories, such as sex, violence, and mature content, with four levels of blocking each.12 If the broadcasting industry selects a system of more complexity, it would be far more difficult to implement.

Each television would require additional circuitry to handle the decoding of the ratings. This would mean that television designers would have to alter the internal layouts of the television components, adding up to $40 to the cost of the television, depending on the manufacturer and model of television.12 Similarly, line 21 of the VBI may not have enough available bandwidth to transmit the desired programming codes if they are too complex. This would cause a more drastic departure from the closed-captioning technology. Another line of the VBI would have to be used which could complicate things tremendously. The demand for use of the VBI is growing rapidly since it is a means of rapidly transmitting data to a large number of people.

In British Columbia, the VBI is being used to transmit such things as weather forecasts and warnings, weather charts, and even satellite pictures.5 Since VBI space can be leased to companies wishing to provide information to the public, the television industry would be extremely reluctant to use additional space for non-profitable information such as rating codes. Not only would the additional VBI space be difficult to obtain, the televisions would need two full sets of decoder circuitry, one to decode the closed-captioning information on line 21, and separate circuitry to decode the rating information on a different line. It would cost more to manufacture the two sets of chips than simply one redesigned chip, and it would cost the television manufacturers more to redesign the architecture of their televisions to accommodate the additional circuitry. Therefore the additional costs per television may be well above the estimated $40. Most of the financial burden, however, would lie on the broadcasters.

Not only would the televisions need new circuitry to receive the rating signals, the broadcasters would need to either upgrade their closed-captioning encoders or install new encoding equipment to generate the V-chip signals and insert them in the VBI.Phil McLaughlin, director of business development for EEG Enterprises, a manufacturer of VBI insertion equipment, says that the additional encoding equipment would probably cost the broadcasters around $5,000, plus another $1,000-$2,000 needed for a data-management computer.12 The most significant cost, however, would be in developing the infrastructure for transmitting the signals, both in personnel and in software. Most closed-captioned programs are encoded by the program producer, not the broadcaster, and the station simply passes the information through. Even if the rating information is delegated to the producers of the programs, to be added along with the closed-captioning signals, the broadcasters would be held accountable if a producer failed to rate their show. Therefore, the broadcast station would have to purchase encoders for live insertion of the rating information.

This would entail considerable cost for the stations, for the new hardware and software for coding, as well as personnel to operate it.12 Even though the V-chip legislation has already been signed into law by the President, it remains at the heart of a heated political battle.The strongest objection raised to the V-chip by its opponents is that it violates the First Amendment Rights of the broadcasters. They claim that the government is imposing a system of censorship that will lead to blander and less dramatic television.14 Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who spearheaded the drive for the V-chip, argues that there is nothing in the legislation that limits the content of programs.

He, and other supporters of the V-chip, say that the broadcasters will still be able to air any programming they wish. They will just have to accompany the programming with a rating that will help identify to parents the content of the programs. He emphasizes that it will be left to the parents to decide which programs they wish to view, not the government.11 Broadcast industry officials don't believe Markey's argument, however.

NBC Executive Vice President and General Counsel Rick Cotton says that NBC supports blocking technology for those viewers who want to block programming. The problem with the V-chip, he claims, is that it puts the government in control of the rating system.14 Floyd Abr ...