November 28, 2005

NEW YORK – A new nationwide survey found that 91 percent of parents use some kind of parental control tools to manage TV content and that twice as many parents frequently use the parental controls that come with cable and satellite than use the v-chip, TV Watch announced today. The Russell Research survey was conducted November 15 – 20, 2005 among 513 parents of children ages 2 - 17.

"Parents are using existing controls and do not want the government deciding what they can watch, even though they don’t want their children watching certain programs," said Jim Dyke, executive director of TV Watch. "Lawmakers and regulators need to know that American moms and dads don't want the government playing parent.”

TV Watch is a non-partisan coalition that raises awareness of parental control tools for TV and opposes increased government regulation of TV content. TV Watch will discuss the survey’s findings at the United States Senate Commerce Committee Open Forum on decency on November 29. An analysis of the survey’s findings follows.

PARENTS COMBINE RULES AND CONTROLS TO MANAGE TV CONTENT

91 percent of parents say they personally take some steps to manage what their children see on TV.

The tools parents personally use range from watching TV with children (63 percent), limiting TV watching to certain shows (61 percent) and times (55 percent), using TV ratings (52 percent), using cable controls (17 percent), satellite controls (12 percent) or the v-chip (5 percent). 64 percent of parents allow their child to have a television in his or her bedroom.

PARENTS EMBRACE THE LATEST PARENTAL CONTROL BLOCKING TECHNOLOGY

A significant majority of parents are familiar with the available parental controls. They are most familiar with TV ratings (96 percent), cable (63 percent), v-chip (49 percent) and satellite (45 percent).

A majority of parents find parental controls useful.

• 85 percent of parents find TV ratings useful
• 66 percent of parents find cable blocking technology useful
• 57 percent of parents find satellite blocking technology useful
• 56 percent of parents find the v-chip to be useful

When asked about their familiarity with parental control tools, parents reported higher familiarity with cable blocking technology than the v-chip and nearly the same level of familiarity with the vchip as satellite blocking technology.

Twice as many parents frequently use the parental controls that come with their television delivery system (cable and satellite) as use the parental controls built into their television set (vchip).

PARENTS USE PERSONAL INTERACTION MORE THAN BLOCKING TECHNOLOGY

To help mange what their children watch on TV, the tools most commonly used by parents are personally watching TV with their child (63 percent), limiting their children’s TV shows (61 percent) and using the TV ratings (52 percent).

Among parents who find TV ratings useful, nearly three-quarters say the ratings are easy to understand that they use the ratings frequently.

PARENTS CARE ABOUT CONTENT BUT FAVOR INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

81 percent of parents worry about the kinds of programs their children could be exposed to on TV and 71 percent of parents said they would like to monitor more what their child watches, but can’t always be with him or her as much as theyI would like.

Despite this, 91 percent of parents said more parental involvement is the best way to keep kids from seeing what they shouldn’t see on TV. Just 9 percent of parents said the government should increase control and enforcement of network television programming. *

And while 83 percent of parents say there have been times when their child had seen content on TV that they wish they hadn’t, 85 percent of parents prefer to have people exercise personal choice over what they watch on television. 8 percent prefer to have the government regulate what is appropriate for television. **