The V-Chip and Various Other Things on My Mind

Time for a caffeine check at Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

B&C; is a weekly trade publication whose editorial page is having a major seizure over the V-chip. That’s the Congress-mandated gizmo for future TV sets that will allow viewers to electronically block certain programs on the basis of their industry-designated ratings for sex and violence.

In other words, most programs ultimately must be labeled under recent V-chip legislation and, guided by these labels, viewers will have the option of accepting these programs by doing nothing or by activating the apparatus, zapping them, even in advance.

It’s the good old American way, the very essence of commercial broadcasting, with you, not the government, making the choice and the industry then programming according to perceived audience tastes, exactly as it says it does now. The marketplace continues to decide, but with greater viewer empowerment, yes?

No, declares a frantic B&C; editorial that sees the V-chip as “no less than the end of freedom of speech/press for television” and “Congress finally getting its hands on the levers of information.”

All right, so far merely a whipped-up Chicken Little version of what other doomsday critics of the V-chip have been warning, that the new system will kill those tender roots of boldness and creativity that have managed to penetrate the thick layers of timidity already encasing mainstream TV.

But B&C; goes even further, charging the TV industry with “giving in to Congress and the President” on this issue: “From this vantage, it smacks of Hitler invading the Sudetenland.”

The reference, raising the specter of Congress and the president as goose-stepping Nazis, is to England’s weak acceptance of Hitler’s occupation of a border area inhabited by people largely of German origin as part of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Come again? Why stop with the Sudetenland? Why not equate the V-chip with the Holocaust? Or Armageddon? Better fix up another million-guy march on D.C., for in the world that’s coming, prophesies B&C; almost biblically, “parents will have abandoned their last responsibility to parenting, satisfied that the V-chip has done it for them.”

The Scriptures speaketh. And once inside your home, moreover, who’s to say that same V-chip won’t rape and pillage, or, at the very least, take over running things like the scheming computer HAL did in “2001: A Space Odyssey”? Remember, you read it first here.

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CHIP-PROOF. One thing the V-chip won’t alter is an onslaught of raunchy ads--for feature films and even TV news--that many parents object to being shown at hours when their kids are in front of the set. They flash on the screen without warning, and, obviously, those responsible for scheduling them couldn’t care less.

It happened again Sunday with the airing of two teases for KTTV-TV Channel 11 news at commercial breaks between 8 and 8:30 p.m. during the first of back-to-back episodes of “The Simpsons,” a Fox series that Channel 11 knows is watched by lots of young children.

The subject of the promos: a parents-beware news story about salacious material that kids can download on home computers, the problem being that the news teases, keyed to women undressing, bordered on salacious themselves.

In the words of Bart, Ay Caramba!

Meanwhile, the second episode of “The Simpsons” contained a coarse wisecrack by 8-year-old Lisa about author Gore Vidal’s sexual orientation. The V-chip won’t necessarily end that either, for even bad taste is protected by the 1st Amendment.

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LOUSY LEAKS. A letter arrived not long ago from TV producer Aaron Spelling, angrily protesting that my review of his new series, “Malibu Shores,” disclosed something it shouldn’t have about the plot.

He was right, and right to complain. I sloppily blew it. No review, whether rave or rap, should ruin a surprise that viewers are meant to discover for themselves. If a review anywhere, for example, had revealed the fate of Janet Leigh in “Psycho” or even the cross-dressing twist of “The Crying Game,” that would have approached movie homicide.

So no wonder that networks and TV producers, when distributing copies of their shows to critics in hopes of getting advance publicity, often include an admonition not to let viewers in on plot secrets. That was the case recently with the mailing of tonight’s jolting finale for NBC’s “Law & Order.”

It was not critics who should have been warned, however, but NBC’s own promo department--for the network has been running an on-air tease for “Law & Order” that breaks all rules by revealing the guts of tonight’s surprise ending.

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MADLY TRIUMPHANT. The biggest challenge facing sitcoms is being funny. The next biggest challenge? Being serious.

Although many sitcoms inexplicably try mixing gravity and comedy, most haven’t the skill or touch and thus bungle the effort.

One exception that comes to mind is a “Family Ties” episode about death that was enormously moving without being klutzy or maudlin. Another is the just-ended HBO comedy “Dream On,” which managed to somehow stay in character while sensitively handling serious themes such as abortion and death--never more so than in its episode about AIDS that seamlessly united humor and tragedy in ways nothing short of superb.

Then came Sunday’s double-sized finale for NBC’s “Mad About You,” billed as veering sharply toward the serious while featuring a marriage separation involving Paul and Jamie. Viewers couldn’t be faulted for being pessimistic about the show’s ability to bring it off.

Indeed, the setup--Paul continuing his epic snit over Jamie’s disclosure that she was kissed by a guy at the office--was belabored. Yet the payoff succeeded, thanks to intelligence, not schmaltzy music or other gimmicks. All in all the story worked, especially the battling couple’s raw dialogue on a park bench that was about as sober as TV gets yet still tender and believable, even from two characters who had spent most of “Mad About You” madly going for laughs.

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MAKE A CONFLICT. The Make-a-Wish Foundation has stirred a big controversy by agreeing to grant a teenage cancer patient’s wish to hunt a kodiak bear in Alaska. So it was stunning to hear Katie Couric disclose Tuesday, just before interviewing a Make-a-Wish official on NBC’s “Today,” that she “did a fund-raiser” for the organization last weekend.

Talk about blasting yourself in the foot. As someone operating under the mantle of “journalist,” Couric has no more business fund-raising for Make-a-Wish at this time than she would for the animal rights groups protesting the organization’s decision to help the young hunter get a crack at a kodiak.