R-rated media & teens: FTC study

Ads for R-rated films may not be appearing around TV shows targeting youth, but they're definitely appearing in Web sites that do. Then there's the proliferation of unrated DVDs on video store shelves. "Despite industry controls, buyers from the ages of 13 to 16, unaccompanied by adults, were able to purchase tickets to R-rated films in 39% of their attempts, and successfully bought unrated or R-rated DVDs 71% of the time," the New York Times reports. These developments are contributing to what a new Federal Trade Commission study found to be an erosion of "the entertainment industry’s promise not to entice youth with violent fare," according to the Times. The FTC says “general compliance with existing voluntary standards" is pretty good, but the entertainment industry is giving enough attention to applying them to "evolving marketing trends.”