Parental interest in v-chips, 'Net screening lags

Like half of all U.S. households, the Clark family is wired from the basement recreation room to the attic home office of its center-hall colonial with TV sets, VCRs, computers and video games.

''Four stories makes it tough to keep an eye on what the kids are hooked up to, but we try,'' father Dan Clark says of his brood of three in Ballwin, Mo.

He is not alone, to judge by a trio of studies from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. It reports that:

- Ninety-seven percent of U.S. households have both TVs and VCRs (more than the Census Bureau says have indoor plumbing) and 48 percent are like the Clarks with personal computers and video games atop TVs and VCRs.

- The average child spends four hours 30 minutes a day hooked up to media outlets, from TV to the Internet.

- Fifty percent of parents can't identify the v-chip ratings used to screen TV shows for sex, violence and adult language that appear at the start of most programs. That's down from 70 percent four years ago, when the ratings system was introduced.

- While TV networks abide by federal rules requiring them to air three hours a week of ''core educational programming,'' most parents don't know or notice the E/l label to identify these shows - labels not carried in TV Guide or newspaper listings.

Annenberg researchers blame the TV industry.

''The television community hasn't put forth the same effort to educate parents about the TV ratings and educational programming that the movie industry has for its ratings system,'' said Kelly Schmitt.

But other questions on the Annenberg Center survey suggest that while parents may worry, they may not be worried enough to pay attention to the tools they have.

For instance, 70 percent of parents polled said ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' and ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' qualify toward the government's three-hour educational programming requirement.

Annenberg polled1,235 parents with children between age 2 and 17 and 416 youngsters 8 to 16.

The movie rating system begun in 1968 served as the pattern for the v-chip rating system adopted after Congress and President Clinton required the chips as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The same 1996 law also banned all ''indecent'' computer and Internet communications - a provision struck down by a unanimous Supreme Court in a move that was expected to spur the sale of computer software filters like ''Net Nanny.'' It didn't.

Before the v-chip was required to be part of all new TV sets built after Jan. 1, 2000, all four broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX - began airing public service announcements last summer about v-chip ratings and telling viewers to get a free parent guide from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Center for Media Education.

The booklets can be ordered by calling the toll-free number 1-877-2-VCHIP or through the Web site http://www.vchipeducation.org. Another 720,000 were printed last month for distribution by Odyssey Network, RCA and Circuit City stores.

However, even Ginny Markell, president of the 6.5 million-member National PTA that supports the v-chip's adoption and use, acknowledges, ''It's not on the radar screen of families unless they're in the market for a new TV.''

James Harper, chief spokesman for Thomson Consumer Electronics, the Indianapolis firm that makes RCA, GE and ProScan TVs, isn't surprised that parents haven't rushed to embrace v-chips when ''it wasn't American parents who were clamoring for them but Congress.''

As a parent of two teens with TVs without v-chips in their bedrooms, Harper agrees with Dan Clark about what their kids are plugged into. ''It finally comes down to how well you've taught them and to trust,'' Harper says.

(Contact Mary Deibel at DeibelM(at)shns.com or http://www.shns.com.)