Twenty years ago today, the FCC formally approved what was seen as a sweeping step against violence, sex, and vulgar language in the media. On March 12, 1998, the agency announced the technical standards for manufacturing a microchip to be installed inside new television sets, known as the V-chip.
Sound and fury surrounded the V-chip during its development and arrival in the 1990s. President Clinton proclaimed its power to save TV from violence and depravity. And then we stopped hearing about it. What happened?
The idea of giving viewers censorship powers over their own televisions had been an appealing one for decades, and claimed multiple inventors. The debate in the United States was inspired by a similar one in Canada, where some viewers regarded American imports like Beavis & Butthead and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers with apprehension.
The American V-chip was based on the invention of Canadian engineer Tim Collings. Then a professor of engineering at Simon Fraser University in British Colombia, Collings had developed a piece of hardware that could be inserted into a modern television and offer users a form of censorship. A 1996 article in Maclean's described his creation this way:
"Like closed-captioning, the signal is inserted on the so-called vertical blanking interval - the black space between each frame of video - and it carries ratings information. In the home, the V-chip decodes the signal and, with a remote control and on-screen display, allows parents to customize their viewing."
The V-chip itself would monitor those signals, and as such, it relied upon a third party to create a ratings system for TV. That's where one of the V-chip's big problems began: a single violent moment in an otherwise genial program could earn a more restrictive rating, frustrating users. An L.A Times investigation into Canadian V-chip usage showed people complaining that the device was "basically a nuisance," and that parents were "surprised the V-chip was stricter than I would have been."
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