We are the vanguards.

By company

Average of all eight measures. The number on the bar is the score.

On all eight measures, Hallmark averages 73 across 8 titles. Google Play averages 39 across 34. The gap is 34 points. 195 measured titles sit on these shelves, and a title on two services is counted on both. A small shelf is a desk, not a census.

By year

Each point is the average all eight measures for titles from that year on that shelf.

Before 2020 against 2020 and after: Hulu moved from 57 to 64. Disney+ moved from 73 to 54. A gap in the line is a year with nothing measured, not a score of zero.

New movies and shows

One chart for each shelf that is on. Each bar is a year. The height is how many new films and series arrived. The stack is three bands of the measure: green hands the evening on, 70 to 100. Brown sits in the middle, 40 to 69. Red does not, 0 to 39. Books and apps are not in these bars.

• Hands it on70–100
• In the middle40–69
• Does not0–39

96 films and series sit on the open shelves. 23 hand the evening on. 54 sit in the middle. 19 do not. Netflix has the most a house can hand on. Before 2020, 18 percent of new films and series scored under 40. From 2020 on, that share is 21 percent. A year with no bar is a year we have not measured, not a year that scored zero.

The bar you will accept

Move it. The red line on both charts moves with you. A shelf at or above the bar is clearing the standard you just set.

How the law got us here

A statute, a court, a commission rule, or an industry code. The screen a child meets was built by these, in this order. Streaming sits at the end of the trail, mostly outside the broadcast rules.

1. 1791 · Constitution

   First Amendment

   Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press. The trail starts here. A vanguard asks for a better shelf. It does not ask the state to own the story.

2. 1927 · Statute

   Radio Act

   Congress created the Federal Radio Commission and told it to license stations for the public interest, convenience, and necessity. The air was no longer a free-for-all.

3. 1934 · Statute

   Communications Act

   Signed June 19, 1934. It created the Federal Communications Commission and folded telephone, telegraph, and radio under one statute. Most of what followed is an amendment to this act.

4. 1934 · Industry

   Production Code

   The studios, not Congress, enforced the Hays Code in earnest from 1934. For a generation the picture business decided what a house was allowed to see, and fined its own members for straying.

5. 1949 · Commission

   Fairness Doctrine

   An FCC policy, not a statute. Broadcast licensees had to cover controversial public issues and present contrasting views. It rested on the idea that spectrum was scarce.

6. 1952 · Court

   Burstyn v. Wilson

   The Supreme Court held that motion pictures are protected speech. A state could no longer ban a film as sacrilege. The screen came under the First Amendment.

7. 1967 · Statute

   Public Broadcasting Act

   Congress created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a fund for noncommercial radio and television. A public lane was cut beside the commercial one.

8. 1968 · Industry

   Film ratings

   The MPAA replaced the Hays Code with a rating card: G, M, R, and X. Parents got a label instead of a ban. PG-13 was added in 1984.

9. 1969 · Court

   Red Lion v. FCC

   The Court upheld the Fairness Doctrine. A broadcast license was a privilege to use a scarce public resource, and the public’s right to hear both sides could outweigh the station’s wish to air only one.

10. 1978 · Court

    FCC v. Pacifica

    A daytime radio broadcast of George Carlin’s monologue. The Court said the FCC may keep indecent material off the air in hours when children are likely to be listening. Broadcast is still the most regulated screen.

11. 1984 · Statute

    Cable Communications Policy Act

    Cable got a federal framework: franchises, public-access channels, and lighter rate rules. The second screen was no longer an afterthought of broadcast.

12. 1987 · Commission

    Fairness Doctrine ends

    The FCC stopped enforcing the doctrine. Congress passed a bill to write it into statute. President Reagan vetoed that bill. Talk radio, and later a lot of cable argument, grew up in the gap.

13. 1990 · Statute

    Children’s Television Act

    Congress limited advertising on children’s broadcast programs and required licensees to serve the educational needs of children. The first modern statute aimed at what a child actually sits through.

14. 1992 · Statute

    Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act

    Passed over President George H. W. Bush’s veto. It put rate rules back on cable for a time and required broadcasters’ consent before a cable system could carry them.

15. 1996 · Statute

    Telecommunications Act

    Signed February 8, 1996. The first full rewrite since 1934. Ownership caps loosened and radio consolidated. The same act required a V-chip, and in Section 230 said a platform is not the publisher of what a user posts.

16. 1997 · Court

    Reno v. ACLU

    The Court struck the Communications Decency Act’s ban on indecent online speech. The internet would not be regulated like a daytime broadcast. Section 230 was left standing.

17. 1998 · Statute

    Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

    Operators of sites aimed at children under 13 must get a parent’s consent before collecting their data. It governs the file they keep on a child, not the story they show the child.

18. 2006 · Statute

    Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act

    After the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast, Congress raised the maximum FCC fine for indecent programming. The hammer got heavier. It still hits licensed broadcasters, not a streaming shelf.