WASHINGTON — Mounting public concern over TV sex and violence--underscored in a speech Monday by President Clinton and by passage of Senate legislation to control TV sex and violence--has suddenly revived interest in a technology that would allow parents to electronically block offensive programming from their living rooms.
Though the technology, known as the V-chip, has been around since at least the late 1980s, it was never able to muster much consumer interest or political momentum until last month, after Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) lashed out at Hollywood in a Los Angeles speech, saying too many films, television shows and records promote sex and violence.
Dole's remarks touched off a public outcry as well as an unusual alliance among liberal Democrats and Republican conservatives who both scrambled to embrace the V-chip.
Although Dole himself opposed legislation that would require the television industry to develop a ratings system and the V-chip, the Senate last month approved such a measure as part of a sweeping telecommunications reform bill. Since then, the V-chip has become a central part of the debate over sex and violence on television.
Speaking Monday at a conference on entertainment media and family values, Clinton said he believes violence and other offensive content on television can be brought under control through a combination of voluntary industry restraints and electronic measures such as the V-chip.
The sudden prominence of the V-chip in the political debate has alarmed Hollywood and television manufacturers, who have long opposed the technology.
"We can all support the goal embraced by the President today," the CBS network said in a statement. "However, CBS must oppose the government mandated means he endorses. The marketplace is already producing other viewer blocking technologies which empower parents to control their children's TV viewing without damaging the Constitution."
Relatively inexpensive and easy to utilize, the V-chip blocks programming by using the same circuitry that allows TVs to decode closed-captioned information. Parents would block out objectionable shows in much the same way they program their VCRs to record programs.
The codes they punch into their remote controls would interact with the so-called "vertical blanking interval"--the black strips that separate each frame of video and are now also used to transmit closed-captioned information to deaf viewers.
