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By Jessilyn Lancaster
The federal government may finally catch up to what Christian parents have known for years: TV ratings tell you almost nothing about what your kids are actually watching.
“Parents overwhelmingly want to be informed of sensitive content in children’s TV shows,” said Penny Nance, CEO and President of Concerned Women for America (CWA). “Parents should be able to make informed viewing decisions for their children, but currently, parents have no way of knowing whether LGBTQ+ content is in that program. It’s time to give parents that choice.”
In FCC reply comments filed on June 22, CWA — the largest public policy women’s organization in the United States — urged regulators to require the TV content ratings system to disclose sensitive material including sex, violence, profanity, and LGBTQ themes in programs marketed to children. The comments responded to the FCC Media Bureau’s Public Notice seeking input on how the TV Parental Guidelines age ratings system and the Television Oversight Monitoring Board can be updated for today’s streaming-dominated landscape.
The numbers behind CWA’s push are hard to ignore. A new poll found that 87% of parents want TV content ratings to flag violence, sexual content, or sensitive themes including LGBTQ messaging or characters in children’s programming. And a separate CWA analysis of Netflix content found that 41% of G-rated series and 41% of TV-Y7-rated series contain LGBTQ+ content — none of which is flagged in the rating.
“The central question before the Commission is not whether certain viewpoints should be promoted or suppressed,” Nance said. “A voluntary ratings system remains an important tool for parental empowerment. For that system to retain public confidence, it must be transparent, understandable, consistently applied, and genuinely accountable to the families it exists to serve.”
CWA also challenged the structure of the oversight system itself. A majority — 79.5% — of U.S. parents support reforming the ratings board to include more independent experts, parent groups, and child-advocacy organizations. Right now, the very companies producing the content largely oversee their own ratings. That’s a bit like letting fast food chains write their own nutrition labels.
Movieguide® Founder and Publisher Dr. Ted Baehr has been making this case for decades. As he wrote in a Movieguide® report, the ratings system has always served producers more than parents: “The answer to the negative effects of media sex and violence is not ratings but objective standards — a proactive code of ethics that will guide television producers and others in the entertainment industry. All other professions hold to a code of ethics; so should the entertainment industry.”
Dr. Baehr’s analogy cuts to the point. “Pollution, even mind pollution, is best controlled at its source,” he wrote. “Rating the water supply toxic is not the solution. Cleaning it up is. The same is true of the movie and television industries.”
CWA’s filing echoes what Movieguide® has long observed firsthand. A TV-PG label on a streaming show is about as reliable as a nutrition label that leaves off the actual ingredients. As Movieguide® has documented repeatedly, shows marketed to families routinely contain content far beyond what their ratings suggest.
“Currently, the record demonstrates that significant questions remain regarding ratings consistency, public awareness of complaint mechanisms, the representativeness of the TV Oversight Monitoring Board, and the adequacy of oversight in an increasingly streaming-dominated media environment,” Nance said. “These concerns cannot be dismissed simply because portions of the comment record focused on a narrower controversy.”
CWA is urging the FCC to continue its oversight of the TV Parental Guidelines and the Television Oversight Monitoring Board, and to pursue reforms that strengthen the framework for the next generation of media consumers. For Christian families doing their best to guard what comes into their homes, that reform can’t come soon enough.
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