TV Parental Guidelines

The TV Parental Guidelines are a television content rating system in the United States that was first proposed on December 19, 1996, by the United States Congress, the American television industry, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The guidelines went into effect by January 1, 1997, on most major broadcast and cable networks in response to public concerns^[1] about increasing amounts of mature content in television programs. It was established as a voluntary-participation system, with ratings to be determined by the individual participating broadcast and cable networks.

The ratings are generally applied to most television series, television films and edited broadcast or basic cable versions of theatrically released films. Premium channels also assign ratings from the TV Parental Guidelines on broadcasts of some films that have been released theatrically or on home video, either if the Motion Picture Association of America did not assign a rating for the film or if the channel airs an unrated version of a film.

The ratings were designed to be used with the V-chip, which was mandated to be built into all television sets manufactured since 2000 (and the vast majority of cable/satellite set-top boxes). They complement more advanced parental control systems that block by channel, program, or content, but the guidelines themselves have no legal force, and are not used on sports or news programs or during commercial advertisements. Many online television services, such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock and Fandango at Home also use the guidelines system, along with digital video vendors such as the iTunes Store and Google Play, and digital media players, including the Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, and Roku platforms.^{[citation needed]}