CBSC National Chair Tells Americans, “Stay Tuned” For News On The Canadian V-Chip (disponible en anglais seulement)

Ottawa, April 11, 1997 -- CBSC National Chair Ron Cohen delivered a speech today at the “V is for Violence” conference organized by the University of California at Santa Barbara. In his speech, Mr. Cohen outlined unique Canadian initiatives to control violence on television and empower television viewers to make informed choices for themselves and their families. He recognized that, while in the U.S., the “V-Chip” is the centrepiece of industry initiatives to controlling violence, in Canada, the V-Chip is but one part of a much larger strategy that includes:

• an industry Code that prohibits gratuitous violence;
• special rules applicable to children’s programming, whether or not it is encoded for V-Chip recognition;
• the requirement to include viewer advisories for violent programming intended for adults; and
• a self-regulatory body, the CBSC, charged with administering the industry’s strict standards.

Mr. Cohen also noted that the CRTC’s revised timetable for the implementation of its Violence Policy called for the imminent submission of AGVOT’s proposed Classification System (around the end of April), the Commission’s reaction to that proposal (around the end of May) and the beginning of the encoding of programming’s for the fall season. Those curious about the details of the Canadian system, whether it would be primarily age-based or content-based and so on should, he advised, “stay tuned”.

The text of the speech is provided electronically on the CBSC Website at www.cbsc.ca.