****Warning *** this is the longest post ever on S.I. Re:TVL N.R. 's today.Apologies to all.
Bugsy RE:TVL (PHPI) I am very long with this one and have been building a position for 3 years with my meager capital. It made me a happy camper today, but I expect much more. Todays late run was probably response to a number of N.R.'s. and fuelled by speculation.
I apologise for the length of this post but you asked for it.! It is after all 11.P.M. You may also want to check out some of my other posts. The stockhouse bullboard is also full of info but it is slow and full of posts that are not to useful as well. Unfortunately the S.I. thread is dead.
Again sorry about the length of this POST.I don't know how to post a link to my newservice as the service selects the articles. I suppose I could just post my account # and Password on the net for all, but that would be kindadumb.
Rampant.
1.
Clinton Seeks End to Youth Violence
.c The Associated Press
By TERENCE HUNT
AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Twenty days after the Colorado school shootings, President Clinton mobilized gunmakers and the entertainment industry on Monday for a national campaign against youth violence. ''We'll have to overcome the old ways of doing business,'' he declared.
The president challenged producers of violent movies, video games and CDs to consider the consequences of what they make. ''We cannot pretend that there is no impact on our culture and our children that is adverse if there is too much violence coming out of what they see and experience,'' the president said.
Sixty opinion leaders -- from poet Maya Angelou and American Online chief Steve Case to singer Gloria Estefan and movie-industry lobbyist Jack Valenti -- came to the White House for three hours of closed-door talks with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, and Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper.
In rare praise from a Republican, House Speaker Dennis Hastert applauded Clinton for holding the meeting and urged more discussions to ''figure out what's ailing our society and how we can correct it.''
Participants included parents, teachers, kids, law enforcement officers and government leaders, along with officials from gunmakers Smith & Wesson Corp., Glock, Inc., and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.
''Everybody recognizes that they're part of the problem, they need to be part of the solution,'' AOL's Case said.
Actor Andrew Shue, former star of ''Melrose Place'' said, ''There was no scapegoating at all in any form. In fact, everybody was completely on the same page, of putting aside their own interests and acting to make something happen.''
In a step hailed by Gore as a breakthrough, AOL and the video game industry agreed at the meeting to plug a loophole that allows children to buy violent video games over the Internet that they are too young to buy in stores.
Moreover, the American Shooting Sports Council, representing 350 firearms manufacturers and distributors, endorsed a five-point administration plan for gun control, including background checks for firearms bought at gun shows and increasing the minimum age for buying a gun to 21.
But there were dissident voices elsewhere.
The National Rifle Association -- angry at being excluded -- bought newspaper ads accusing the government of failing to enforce laws already on the books. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said Clinton was ''dusting off every tired old gun-control bill that has been around his administration for the last six years.''
Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer demanded that the White House ''shame the entertainment industry'' and said that Clinton and Gore ''should stop taking Hollywood money. People in my party should stop, too.'' Clinton will see his movie-making pals at a $1.5 million Beverly Hills fund-raiser this weekend.
''We know that there is more for each of us to do at home and at school, in Hollywood and in the heartland, and here in Washington,'' Clinton said. ''Every parent, every teacher, every leader has something more to do.''
The White House meeting was called after the April 20 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before shooting themselves.
Gore's wife, Tipper said Littleton ''was symbolic for so many of us and such a tragedy and a wake-up call'' but that ''there have been little massacres going on in our society for years.''
The session was designed to lay the groundwork for a national campaign against youth violence, much like other campaigns to curb teen-age pregnancy and to find jobs for welfare recipients. Clinton directed Surgeon General David Satcher to prepare a report on the causes of youth violence, the first in more than 10 years.
Nancy Dickey, president of the American Medical Association, said there already is plenty of information about children and violence. ''It's pretty clear there are causes, particularly related to media exposure, increasing when they can get hands-on with video games, and the need for treatment of mental illness, especially depression in children.''
Gore praised ABC, CBS and most of the satellite and cable networks for participating in the voluntary V-chip rating system allowing parents to block sexually explicit or violent programs. But the vice president ''chided NBC for not taking part,'' White House domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed said. NBC uses less detailed ratings, but parents can still use them to block unwanted shows on TV sets containing the V-chip.
Ten percent of all public schools reported at least one serious violent crime in the 1996-97 school year. School deaths peaked in 1992-93 at 55 fatalities. In contrast, the total for the current school year -- including the Columbine High School rampage -- is 24.
The NRA said that in the last two years, federal authorities prosecuted only: 11 juveniles caught with guns; 11 adults who illegally provided guns to juveniles; and 37 felons who acquired guns through others.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Steel acknowledged that federal prosecution rates for gun violations have dipped but said it was misleading to look at those figures alone. Steel said looking at local and federal figures combined, authorities have actually increased their prosecutions of gun-toting criminals by nearly 25 percent since the beginning of the Clinton administration.
Rumors of impending violence spread on the computer Internet, meanwhile, cut attendance at several school districts in the Washington area Monday. Absenteeism in Montgomery County, Md., high schools was 36 percent -- six times normal -- and more than double the usual rate in Prince George's County, Md. Maryland public schools postponed standardized statewide tests.
Campaign to Educate Parents About the V-Chip Announced; New Survey Finds Most Parents Want to Use the V-Chip, But Aren't Well Informed About How to Do So
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 10, 1999--A national campaign to educate parents about the V-Chip TV ratings system was announced today by the Center for Media Education (CME) and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
The V-Chip Education Project will teach parents how to use the V-Chip to screen TV content inappropriate for children, should they choose to do so. As required by Congress, half of all new TV sets must be equipped with a V-Chip by July 1, 1999, with the remaining half by January 1, 2000.
A survey released today by the Kaiser Foundation found that six out of ten parents say they are concerned "a great deal" that their children are being exposed to too much sex (66%) or violence (60%) in the TV shows they watch. Seventy-seven percent of parents say that if they had a V-Chip in their home they would use it to block shows they didn't want their children to see, a twelve percentage point increase over a year ago (65%).
But the survey also revealed that less than four out of ten (39%) parents has ever seen or heard anything explaining the TV ratings system, and that most parents do not have enough information about how the ratings work to be able to use the V-Chip effectively. In fact, use of the TV ratings has declined over the past year, according to the survey. Forty-four percent of parents say they use the TV ratings "often" or "sometimes" to help make decisions about what shows their children will watch, down from 54% of parents one year ago.
"Parental concern about sex and violence on TV has never been higher," said Drew Altman, Ph.D., president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "But parents who want to use the ratings and the V-Chip need to understand how they work first. That's the goal of this educational campaign."
"Children today are surrounded by an electronic media culture that often reverberates with violent images," said CME president Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. "The V-Chip was designed to give parents a choice in determining what level of violence, adult language and sexual expression they want to allow children to view," Montgomery continued. "That choice is meaningless unless they understand how the V-Chip works."
According to the Kaiser Foundation survey, nearly one out of five parents (19%) has not even heard of the TV ratings system. Even among those parents who are aware of the ratings system: -0- *T
-- Only five of the 11 ratings categories are understood by a
majority of parents (TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, V and L; TV-Y, TV-Y7, TV-MA, S, D, and FV are not understood by most parents);
-- Less than half of parents know that sitcoms (47%), children's
shows (45%), talk shows (43%), or soap operas (21%) are rated;
-- Among parents with children under 10, only 17% can name one of
the ratings used to identify shows specifically designed for
children (TV-Y, TV-Y7), and only 4% know what the rating "FV"
means (it stands for "fantasy violence" and is the only rating
that indicates whether a children's show contains violence).
*T -0- Even before the tragic events in Littleton, Colorado, CME and the Kaiser Foundation had been planning The V-Chip Education Project to coincide with the July 1 deadline for the availability of V-Chip equipped TV sets in retail stores. The educational campaign will include the distribution of free booklets for parents on how the ratings system and the V-Chip works, and will guide viewers on how to best watch television with children. The free parent information will be promoted through a toll-free telephone number, newspaper inserts, a new Web site, and an outreach effort involving the nation's leading parent, education and health groups.
Methodology: Parents and the V-Chip is a national random sample survey of parents of children ages 2-17. The survey was designed by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Princeton Survey Research Associates (PSRA) and was conducted by PSRA by telephone between April 6-26, 1999. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The survey updates a previous Foundation survey, Parents, Children and the Television Ratings System, conducted in April, 1998. In the current survey, some interviews were completed after the Littleton, Colorado school shootings. None of the findings reported in this release had statistically significant differences between the pre and post Littleton respondents.
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, is an independent national health care philanthropy and not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries. This survey was conducted as part of the Foundation's Program on the Entertainment Media & Public Health, which was established to examine the impact of entertainment media in society and to work with entertainment industry leaders to help them convey important health messages to the public.
The Center for Media Education (CME) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a quality media culture for children, families and their communities. Founded in 1991, CME fosters telecommunications policymaking in the public interest through its research, advocacy, public education and outreach initiatives.
Copies of the survey questionnaire and complete results are available online at www.kff.org, or by calling the Kaiser Family Foundation's publications request line at 1-800-656-4533 and requesting publication No. 1477.
--30--ac/sf* slt
CONTACT:
Center for Media Education
Debra Roth, 202/331-7833 ext. 38
or
Kaiser Family Foundation
Missy Krasner, 650/854-9400 ext. 268
3.Panasonic Achieves 100 Percent V-Chip Compliance in New TV Line
SECAUCUS, N.J., May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- One hundred percent -- a figure representing completeness that's often hard to achieve.
Nevertheless, Panasonic's done it with its 1999 TV lineup. Fully 100 percent of the company's applicable televisions comply with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate on incorporation of "V-chip" integrated circuitry that gives viewers the option of blocking programs they consider objectionable. Panasonic's achievement far outstrips the FCC's guidelines, which call for manufacturers to reach a level of 50 percent compliance by July 1999. Manufacturers do not have to achieve one hundred percent compliance on new models with diagonal screen sizes 13 inches or larger until January 2000.
"We're proud to be ahead of the curve on V-chip compliance, but our achievement's really no surprise," comments Bill Mannion, general manager of the Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company's Television and Network Systems Division. "Panasonic supplied the prototype V-chip TV that was part of the first national broadcast demonstration, so by reaching 100 percent compliance we're just continuing our leadership in this area."
Using a technical standard devised by the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association, the V-chip circuitry system in a television set receives and processes a data stream of content ratings codes transmitted with individual TV programs by a broadcaster or cable system. These data contain the "Content Rating Advisory System," a voluntary ratings system adopted last year by the television industry. This system uses labels to indicate the specific nature of programming based on age/maturity/content considerations. When programmed by a viewer, a V-chip-equipped TV can respond to the advisory information by blocking programs that the viewer deems undesirable.
Making the 1999 Panasonic TV line-up's 100 percent V-chip compliance all the more impressive is the fact that it was achieved without the addition of a price premium to any model in the new TV line. Also of note, the freestanding Panasonic set-top digital decoder will be equipped in 2000 with special V-chip circuitry necessary for responding to content information in digital TV broadcasts.
The 1999 Panasonic line of TV/VCR combination units is also impressive in terms of V-chip compliance, with 17 of 19 models featuring V-chip circuitry. New Jersey-based Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company (PCEC) is a division of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America (MECA). MECA is the principal North American subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., (MEI) (NYSE: MC) of Japan, one of the world's largest producers of electronic and electric products for consumer, business and industrial use. Additional information on Matsushita/Panasonic is available at www.panasonic.com.
SOURCE Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company |
