Rating System

Despite a warning from the county grand jury, the Orange County Board of Supervisors declined Tuesday to impose a letter grading system designed to inform would-be diners about the health safety record of restaurants. It was the second time that county supervisors rejected using a system that's become nearly universal in Southern California -- using letter grades to measure restaurants. Orange County does not require its 13,000 restaurants to post letter grades after health inspections.

The Bush administration said it would put in place a rating system for nursing homes by the end of the year. It's designed to give consumers another tool to consider when shopping for a nursing home. The ratings would be placed on a government website. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it would seek comment from the industry and consumers to determine what criteria to use. Federal officials also unveiled new regulations that would require all nursing homes to have sprinkler systems by 2013.

Moody's Investors Service is considering a new rating system for mortgage-backed bonds and other so-called structured-finance securities that would use numbers instead of traditional letter grades. Some investors and lawmakers say Moody's and other rating firms lost credibility early last year by grading sub-prime securities too highly and then failing to account quickly enough for a surge in mortgage defaults that would later roil credit markets. In a letter Monday, the rating firm asked investors for comments on five options it is reviewing to improve ratings, including a numerical scale and a designation of ".sf" to differentiate a structured finance ranking from a grade indicating the creditworthiness of a corporate or government borrower.

Facing pressure from radio broadcasters, Arbitron Inc. said it planned to narrow the sample-size guarantee of a new electronic audience measurement system. The radio ratings company said it would narrow its Portable People Meter ratings system to cover people ages 18 to 54 instead of all people older than 6.

Radio industry leader Clear Channel Communications Inc. has agreed to use a new electronic rating system in the top 50 U.S. markets, a person familiar with the agreement said. The electronic audience measurement system is aimed at replacing a decades-old system of paper diaries. Several other radio broadcasters have already agreed to use the new system from Arbitron Inc. A person familiar with the situation said Friday that the Clear Channel deal covered the top 50 U.S.

Moody's Investors Service will change the way it rates bonds backed by second-lien sub-prime home loans, which have contributed to turmoil in mortgage markets. The new method will be published by the end of this month, Moody's said, without providing further details. U.S. investors, ratings companies and lawmakers have begun to reevaluate the way mortgage-bond risk is measured and assessed after lax lending standards led to a rise in the number of bad loans.

THE MOVIE INDUSTRY'S ratings system, which dates back to Lyndon Johnson's presidency, is older than the target audience for most of its movies. Jointly run by the Motion Picture Assn. of America and the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, the system has drawn many complaints from filmmakers, critics and parents over the years for being inconsistent and occasionally inscrutable.

Television ratings giant Nielsen Media Research on Friday delayed the launch of a controversial system to measure viewership for commercials after encountering stiff resistance from TV programmers who believed the ratings system wasn't ready for prime time. "We have $50 billion in advertising revenue riding on this," said Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal's president of research. "There's no value in rushing to do something before it's ready.

The Classification and Rating Administration referred to in the Oct. 14 editorial, "This editorial not yet rated," is made up of parents who are trained by the chairman to assign ratings to movies that they think an average American parent would give to guide other parents in deciding what movies their children see. The Motion Picture Assn. of America ratings board rates each film according to the parameters found on our website. All movie ratings and ratings' descriptions are posted on www.filmratings.

Since 1968, when the MPAA ratings system was created as a successor to the more censorious Hays Code, the Motion Picture Assn. of America has wielded enormous power over movies. Foreign, art and independent films, which can be stopped in their tracks by the dread NC-17 rating, have been particularly vulnerable to the board's mercurial decisions.