By Mary Fauldsstaff writer

January 2011 – In 2005, a Pew Research poll found that 61% of American adults personally had a problem with the language they heard on television. It is no surprise then that two million families have invested in a technology known as TV Guardian.

Rick Bray, the founder and inventor of TV Guardian, came up with the idea while on a family vacation. He rented a movie from his childhood that he thought was unobjectionable. While watching, he began to notice the foul language that proliferated through this “family” movie. He began thinking it would be great if there were some technology that would allow families to watch these great movies without the unnecessary foul language.

Britt Bennett, president of TV Guardian, said he came to the company in a similar fashion. “I was watching what I thought was a family movie with my own kids. It is a hilarious movie and I remembered watching it in the movie theater. So I thought I’d sit down and watch a family movie, and once again the foulest language was coming out! And my kids were really young! I guess it was really foolish of me to subject them to it. But that’s the thing – you don’t intend to subject them to that kind of language.”

Bennett said that’s the point of TV Guardian. Parents don’t use that language in front of their kids, and they try to protect them from it, but Bennett said, “Parents have sort of resigned themselves to think that there is no other option. They can either watch TV and be offended, or don’t watch TV at all.”

According to Bennett, the technology used to clean up movies and television shows is fairly simple. It reads the closed captioning embedded in DVDs and television shows and either replaces the offensive words or mutes them out. The TV Guardian will not work on live television events or anything that doesn’t have closed captioning.

There are several settings parents can use to customize their TV Guardian. The language filter ranges from tolerant to strict. There is also a religious option. While the TV Guardian will filter out when someone takes the Lord’s name in vain, on the religious option, it will allow the Lord’s name to be heard on religious programming.

Originally, TV Guardian was a box sold in stores. It was immediately a hit. “We won a best-of-show award at the Las Vegas electronics show,” Bennett said. “And only three or four products get that kind of recognition. We were also featured in the Wall Street Journal.” Through retail outlets, over 400,000 boxes were purchased.

Then the company decided to get licensed into DVD players, so people would not have to have extra equipment with their TV. They also ceased manufacturing the stand-alone boxes.

As DVD players went down in cost and size, TV Guardian faced a new challenge of how to get its product into homes. Bennett said they decided to work with cable and satellite companies to see if they would be willing to carry the TV Guardian technology in their receivers.

Unfortunately, only one satellite carrier and no cable operators decided to partner with TV Guardian. “We worked very long and very hard to have them build it in and offer it to their customers,” said Bennett. “Whether their subscribers are believers or not, most people don’t want to hear offensive language. We told them that they would have higher pay-per-view income and higher usage. We got very close, but besides Dish Network, the companies decided that it was not something that they wanted to offer.”

Now, families interested in having TV Guardian in their house have three choices. The first is to subscribe to Dish Network. The box that the subscriber receives has the TV Guardian technology built in and there is no additional fee from Dish or TV Guardian to use it.

The second option is to buy the box outright. Bennett said they received enough calls that they have begun manufacturing the stand-alone box again. The third option is rental. People who may not want to have the box forever or just don’t have the funds up front can rent the box for a low monthly fee.

Another major benefit of TV Guardian is that parents can feel some freedom about the television again. “There are so many great movies out there that are inspirational and motivational, but, again, you can’t watch without hearing cuss words,” said Bennett. “This product allows you to maintain a degree of holiness in your home.”  

www.tvguardian.com
1-800-298-5618
[email protected]
800-298-5618