• by David Kaplan , May 5, 2005

After two years of taking indecency charges on the chin, CBS, NBC, and Fox got together on Wednesday to form an advocacy group called TV Watch which opposes government control of television programming and promotes the use of parental controls such as the V-chip.

ABC is not part of the group, and officials were unavailable for comment.

The group's members come from a pretty wide spectrum--from the American Conservative Union and Americans for Tax Reform to Jeff Jarvis, blogger for BuzzMachine.com and former Sopranos star, actor Joe Pantoliano.

To buttress their "don't tread on us" sensibility, TV Watch also released a national poll which claims that the public overwhelmingly prefers parental responsibility to government control. By a "staggering" eight-to-one ratio, TV Watch said respondents believe that "more parental involvement" is a better solution to keeping kids from seeing adult content than "increase [d] government control."

"Consumers know the impact that advocates of more government regulation are having on television programming, said Jim Dyke, TV Watch's executive director. "Important news and entertainment programming such as the World War II classic "Saving Private Ryan," Iraq war documentaries, and popular TV shows have been changed or not aired out of fear of government fines."