A consortium of television industry groups have urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to leave in place a decades-old ratings system that is intended to give parents better information about TV programs.
In joint comments filed with the FCC this week, the National Association of Broadcasters, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association and the Motion Picture Association defended the voluntary ratings system, saying the voluntary program is effective and widely understood by American consumers.
The filing comes as the FCC continues its inquiry into whether changes are needed to the TV Parental Guidelines, which were first established in the late 1990s following the passage of the Telecommunications Act.
The three organizations said the current ratings system continues to meet its core purpose of helping parents and caregivers make informed viewing decisions for children.
“Indeed, the Guidelines are a widely recognized, well understood, and broadly used tool to help parents and caregivers make informed decisions about the television programs their children watch,” the groups wrote.
The TV industry itself has refined the ratings system over time, the groups content, including efforts several years ago to improve transparency and consistency across traditional TV platforms like broadcast and cable channels and emerging digital platforms like free streaming channels and subscription-based apps.
Those efforts include annual public reports from the Monitoring Board, the creation of a Streaming Task Force and a Spot Check Review Program intended to improve ratings accuracy and consistency.
The trade groups also stressed that ratings systems now exist within a broader ecosystem of parental controls and viewing tools available on modern televisions and streaming services. Still, they argued the TV Parental Guidelines remain an important component of that framework.
“The Monitoring Board plays a vital role in fostering consistent TV ratings across broadcast, cable, and streaming platforms,” the filing stated.
Separately, the free-market technology policy group TechFreedom challenged the FCC’s authority to revisit the ratings system at all, arguing Congress only granted the agency limited authority to intervene if the television industry failed to establish an adequate voluntary system.
In comments signed by TechFreedom President Berin Szóka, the organization argued the FCC never made such a determination and therefore lacks legal authority to reopen the issue decades later.
“How lawful content is labeled is a matter for private actors to decide, not the government,” TechFreedom wrote in their filing.
The group contended that the Telecommunications Act provided the FCC only a “narrow, one-time authority” to act on television ratings if the industry failed to create a suitable system within a specific statutory window.
