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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Monday, April 25, 2005

Family rated

 •  Family-friendly shows

By Mike Duffy
Knight Ridder News Service

Television can easily get on a parent's last nerve when kids want to watch the darndest, most inappropriate things.

Greg Taylor • The Honolulu Advertiser
But in the 21st-century world, where children's consumption of all forms of media — from television to video games and the Internet — has been growing rapidly, parents face a difficult challenge.

Monitoring kids' TV viewing is tougher today than in the long-ago days of three networks, limited choices and mostly G-rated programming.

Tracy Dreslinski of Rochester Hills, Mich., is a case study. It was her 15-year-old daughter Katie's fascination with "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" that really rang the chimes of her parental concern.

"That's the one where we said, 'Let's yank the cable,' " Dreslinski recalls. "Katie was always sneaking downstairs to watch 'SVU,' " a grim adult crime drama that focuses on violent sexual-assault cases. So out went the cable hookup to Tracy and Scott Dreslinski's basement television.

Now the family's only cable-connected television is the one with a 32-inch screen in the family room. And that one's connected to a digital video recorder so the family — which includes Katie, 11-year-old Emily and 4-year-old Ben — can avoid commercials and watch favorite shows on their own schedule.

"Our household rule is that the kids can only watch TV when they're watching with me, unless it's a tape of one of our 'approved' programs," says Dreslinski, 44, a self-employed technology consultant and Web designer.

The simpler life

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," with its rewarding of deserving households, is considered family-friendly at the Dreslinski home, which has pulled the plug on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

ABC

The programs on her list of mom-approved shows that she and her daughters usually watch together include the family-oriented dramas "Joan of Arcadia," "Jack & Bobby" and "7th Heaven," as well as family sitcoms such as "8 Simple Rules" and the warmhearted reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

"There's so much terrible stuff on TV today, it's scary," Dreslinski says. "So we set out to limit the amount of time they watch. If we watch together, it doesn't count against their own TV time, which is supposed to be one hour a day. But they probably watch more, especially after school. I'm not a Nazi about it."

A new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18- year-olds," is especially sobering. The national survey of the media-consumption habits of 2,000 3rd-through-12th-graders found that "the total amount of media content young people are exposed to each day has increased more than an hour (from 7 hours, 29 minutes to 8 hours, 33 minutes) over the past five years."

Playing by the rules

While most of the increase comes from the use of video games and computers, television — the mass entertainment medium once labeled the "plug-in drug" — still occupies plenty of children's daily attention. And 53 percent of the young people surveyed for the study said their families "have no rules about watching TV."

Of the 46 percent who indicated their parents do have TV rules, just 20 percent said the rules are enforced "most" of the time.

Children in homes where TV rules are enforced have, on average, two hours less daily media exposure than those in homes without rules, the study concluded.

Parents who enforce TV rules are sometimes fighting a losing battle, says Mary Ann Watson, a professor of television and film at Eastern Michigan University.

"Now they're up against an avalanche of stuff that any parent with any sense would not want their kids watching," says Watson, citing everything from the raunchy cartoon satire "South Park" to the gross-out reality show "Fear Factor."

Competing with cable

Increasingly, with the major commercial networks like ABC, CBS and NBC desperate to compete with adventurous, anything-goes cable series like "Deadwood," "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck," the boundaries of coarse language, sexual content and violence have been expanded.

"The difference between even 10 years ago and today is pretty remarkable," Watson says. "The sexual innuendo in almost every sitcom? It's ubiquitous."

The networks have also expanded offerings of graphic adult crime dramas, a trend that began when "NYPD Blue" debuted in 1993 and continues today with the forensic gore on three editions of "CSI."

Of course, different families have different standards for what is acceptable.

In eye of beholder

Ratings showed that many found no problem with "Friends," for instance. That was a huge hit that frequently featured sexually laced comic banter. The show became a magnet for many viewers as young as 10.

And there has been an explosion of reality TV series in recent years, including occasionally taste-challenged network shows like "Big Brother," "Fear Factor" and "The Simple Life," which attract some school-age viewers.

"The thing with entertainment is that it's like the environment," Watson says. "A lot of it is cultural pollution. So to say, as some do, that 'If you don't like it, change the channel' is like saying 'If you don't like air pollution, just stop breathing.' "

But American popular culture — be it TV shows, movies, music, comic books or video games — can be thrilling to one person and exasperating to another. And to some, who believe in the American notion of exuberantly free expression and creativity, saying "If you don't like it, change the channel" sounds perfectly reasonable.

"You feel like you're supposed to say, 'I only watch public TV,' " Tracy Dreslinski jokes. "But I like TV."

• • •

Family-friendly shows

When it comes to tastes in television, subjectivity rules. One family's favorites might not fly in another home.

With that in mind, here's a rundown on some family-friendly network shows that should, at least in part, past muster in many homes.

"7th Heaven":

(7 tonight, WB/KFVE). The current granddaddy of genial, G-rated family drama, this saga of the Rev. Eric Camden (Stephen Collins), wife Annie (Catherine Hicks) and their seven children has already been renewed for a ninth season. A sense of humor helps the formulaic sugar go down.

"Everwood":

(8 tonight, WB/KFVE). A clever, affecting mix of teen and family drama, revolving around the multigenerational stories of a brilliant New York surgeon (Treat Williams) who moves with his two children to an idyllic Rocky Mountain town after his wife dies.

"Everybody Loves Raymond":

(8 tonight, CBS). Television's biggest family comedy hit — featuring the funny, neurotic, caustic and often emotionally insightful stories of Ray Barone (Ray Romano) and his bickering clan — says farewell after nine seasons in May.

"Veronica Mars":

(5 p.m. tomorrow, UPN/KIKU). In a sly, sharp-witted 21st-century variation on Nancy Drew, Kristen Bell brings postmodern moxie to her portrait of a teen sleuth who has bonded with her loving detective father.

"Gilmore Girls":

(7 p.m. tomorrow, WB/KFVE). The mother-and-daughter relationship stories of over-caffeinated Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her cerebral Yalie daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) have the bantering, fast-paced energy of a classic screwball comedy from the 1940s. A loopy delight. Hawai'i-born Keiko Agena, a graduate of Mid-Pacific Institute, co-stars.

"Kevin Hill":

(4 p.m. Wednesday, UPN/KIKU). Taye Diggs has a winning smile. And he's a charming treat as a hotshot entertainment lawyer and ladies' man suddenly forced to deal with parental responsibilities after adopting the infant daughter of a recently deceased cousin.

"Jack & Bobby":

(8 p.m. Wednesday, WB/KFVE). Christine Lahti is a knockout as a flawed, emotionally intense mother and college professor struggling to raise two adolescent sons. WB's provocative, offbeat family and political drama is TV's best show that no one's watching.

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition":

(7 p.m. Sunday, ABC). Ty Pennington and his design crew answer the home-remodeling dreams of deserving families in a wholesome, touching architectural variation on old, old shows like "Queen for a Day." Shedding a few tears is usually part of the fun.