Viewers Media Argumentative Persuasive Essays
TV Ratings Benefit Viewers
Four Sources Cited What we and our children are watching on TV has become a concern to many. Some feel like there should be something to help decide what they think is appropriate and what is not. So in today’s world TV ratings are a must. TV ratings might just be one of the best ways to control what is coming into our homes. With TV ratings we won’t have to research every show that our children want to see.
We only have to look in the corner of the TV to see what the program might contain, and then if we don’t approve we can tell that child that he or she must change the channel. This could be a way of controlling the violence, language, sex, ect., that our children are seeing and hearing. But we have to realize that there are people out there who make a living off of TV and that this might not be the best solution for these people.
In 1996 congress passed a law about putting ratings, or as they called it codes, on TV programs. Congress told the TV industry that had to make them up or they would make them up for them and there would be no changing them.
The ratings system introduced letter codes that were designed to alert parents to programs that may contain sex, violence, language or suggest an appropriate age for the viewing of that program. These kind of codes might be something like a “V” for violence, an “L” for languages, an “S” for sexual content, and some familiar signs, like PG, for parental guidance, that are used on movies today. Now that it has been a couple of years congress has been trying to come up with other ways to help control what is coming into the home through the TV. (Disconsiglio 14.)
The republicans were the ones who wanted to promote less violence on TV, so different groups of people got together and help put them in office. Then while the republicans were in office the people who helped them get there wanted the favor back.
These people started to tell the people in congress that if they didn’t start to do anything about the TV problem then they tell voters in the next election that the republicans don’t really care about the future generation and what they are watching on TV. (Disconsiglio 14.) One of the ways that they are trying to show that they are interested is through the “V” chip.
This little chip will be placed inside of a TV set and when a show comes on that is violent the chip will read the rating and turn off the show. You will be able to turn this chip on and off through a numerical code on the remote control. That way, while parents are at work they don’t have to worry about their kids watching violent shows with out them knowing it.
(Jones 4.) Later on they’re hoping to install other commands on the chip so that parents can stop more than just violence.
I believe that the TV station owners feel like they will be hurt financially by ratings. Some of their concerns might be: what to air, when to air it, how much of something they should air, how people are going to respond to them and the stations, and how much extra is this going to cost.
Since people are starting to depend a lot on TV ratings, I believe that TV station owners are starting to take into consideration what they should put on the air and what they shouldn’t. If one station happens to show more TV shows that are PG-14 than another station, then the station showing higher rated shows might lose ratings because parents don’t think that these shows are appropriate for their children to watch.
This is a big concern for TV station owners because they need to find a happy medium between family programming and adult programming. TV stations don’t want to show too much of one .
