HOW THE RATING SYSTEM IS USED BY THEATER OWNERS AND VIDEO RETAILERS
Motion picture theater owners, who co-founded the rating system in 1968, were the first group in the entertainment industry to voluntarily enforce its guidelines. NATO estimates that the majority of the theater owners in the nation observe the rating system.
In the mid 1980's, as watching movies on videocassettes at home soared in popularity, video retailers joined theater owners in embracing the voluntary guidelines of the rating system. Parents who relied on the rating system to determine which films their children viewed in theaters found the information provided by the rating classifications equally helpful in home video. To facilitate its use, ratings are displayed on both the videocassette package and the cassette itself.
The Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA), which is the major trade association for video retailers in the United States, has adopted a "Pledge to Parents" which strongly endorses the observance of the voluntary movie rating system by video retailers.
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THE PUBLIC REACTION
We count it crucial to make regular soundings to find out how the public perceives the rating program, and to measure the approval and disapproval of what we are doing.
Nationwide scientific polls, conducted each year by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, have consistently given the rating program high marks by parents throughout the land. The latest poll results show that 76% of parents with children under 13 found the ratings to be "very useful" to "fairly useful" in helping them make decisions for the moviegoing of their children.
On the evidence of the polls, the rating system would not have survived if it were not providing a useful service to parents.
The rating system isn't perfect but, in an imperfect world, it seems each year to match the expectations of those whom it is designed to serve - parents of America.
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