TV Parental Guidelines

The TV Parental Guidelines is a television content rating system in the United States that was first proposed on December 19, 1996, by the United States Congress, the American television industry, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The system was introduced on January 1, 1997, on most major broadcast and cable networks in response to public concerns about increasing amounts of mature content in television programs. The system consists of six age-based ratings, as well as content descriptors (designated by letters displayed underneath the rating symbol) specifying content such as suggestive dialogue (D), sexual situations (S), coarse language (L), and/or violence (V).

The ratings are generally applied to most television series, television films and edited broadcast or basic cable versions of theatrically released films. They are not typically used for news or sports broadcasts. Premium channels also assign ratings from the TV Parental Guidelines on broadcasts of some films that have been released theatrically or on home video, either if the Motion Picture Association did not assign a rating for the film or if the channel airs an unrated version of a film.

The TV Parental Guidelines is a self-regulatory scheme that was voluntarily adopted by the United States' broadcasting industry, and does not have legal force for programmers. Federal law requires televisions manufactured since 2000, and all digital television receivers, to include parental controls that allow programming to be filtered based on their TV Parental Guidelines rating (typically referred to as "V-chip").

Development of the guidelines

In 1993, the four major American broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) began airing disclaimers before programs with violent content. This came amid increasing concern over the effects of violence in mass media, and was described by The Washington Post as an attempt to avoid government-imposed regulations.