The New York Times, February 10, 1996 The Idiot Chip By Frank Rich [Columnist] In the annals of dumb solutions to serious problems, history will have a ball with the V-chip, the antidote to trash TV that became the law of the land on Thursday when Bill Clinton signed the telecommunications bill. Far from making television safer for children, the V-chip will merely postpone and confuse the issue until well into the next century -- even as it provides politicians with convenient cover. By embracing the V-chip, Democrats and Republicans alike can posture as if they care about children without actually having to do anything to improve their cultural lot. Let Mr. V-chip do the job instead! The V-chip is a gimmick that has as much to do with ameliorating TV for kids as the Forbes flat tax has to do with serious tax reform. To see why, it's essential to realize that a cultural revolution took place in America this week. Contrary to the headlines and sound bites, the new telecommunications law is not just about cable rates and phone service, the explosion of new technologies and the unconstitutional effort to stamp out "indecency" and abortion information on the Internet. If you look at the bigger picture, this law is also about a mammoth expansion of mass culture -- more media, more outlets -- and a rapid expansion of power for the handful of mega-corporations that control it all, from TV, movies, music and publishing to both print and electronic news. It was perfectly symbolic that on the day Mr. Clinton signed the bill, Disney got its official Federal approval to swallow up ABC. Into this vast new universe of omnipotent media goliaths comes the tiny V-chip, designed to help parents block the coarse outpourings of an exploding digital universe. Common sense alone dooms this gizmo to failure. Who can rate some 600,000 hours of programming broadcast per year by even our current 70-channel cable systems? (Hollywood only has to rate roughly 550 movies -- 1,000 hours -- per year.) Should crime-sated local news be blocked? "MASH" reruns? Reports from a future gulf war? "E.R."? Pro football? "Schindler's List"? (If so, a network may be tempted to duck a V-chip block -- which would lower ratings and revenue -- by sanitizing the Holocaust.) Even if all the practical, political and legal questions raised by the V-chip could be miraculously resolved overnight, it is still pie-in-the-sky. The chips are only required on new TV sets, so it will be years before most households, especially multi-set households, will be in the V-chip's harness. Even then, parents with kids in different age groups will have to choose between their younger and older children as they decide whether to flick the switch each night. Weaker parents will take the same path of least resistance they do now. As the founder of Action for Children's Television, Peggy Charren has been fighting for kids decades longer than most politicians. She is not only skeptical that the V-chip will transform lax parents into concerned ones, but points out that the chip doesn't even address the Saturday morning blight of brainwashing commercials ("worse than the programming") for violent toys and junk food. Nor, Ms. Charren adds, is there any language in the telecommunications law to require networks to increase the quantity and quality of good children's TV that might offer an after-school alternative to "Jenny Jones." Mr. Clinton will press for better programming when he meets with Hollywood potentates -- some of whom are his campaign contributors -- at the White House on Feb. 29. A far tougher idea -- one adopted by the British Government last month -- is being promoted by the Media Access Project, a public-interest organization. It argues that the one gift the networks still want from Congress and didn't get in the telecommunications law -- more space on the public airwaves (so-called "spectrum") for additional channels -- be given only if they agree to cede some of it to public-service broadcasting, including top-notch children's TV. But the greedy media goliaths will fight any such proposal as vehemently as they oppose the V-chip. The politicians, hiding behind the V-chip, will let them get away with it. Delinquent parents, told that their children will soon be in the hands of an electronic nanny, will have a new excuse for doing nothing. And like each TV generation before it, today's children will grow up to fight this battle for their children on yet another day. [End]