Streaming services like yours depend on families like mine for your survival.

Our subscription dollars pay your salaries, underwrite your operations, and fund development.

Yet you ignore the real needs of families.

A recent report from the Parents Television and Media Council (PTC) revealed that there is no consistency across streaming platforms when it comes to parental controls or common-sense safeguards for families with young children.

As you well know, the COVID pandemic and its corresponding nationwide lockdown has led to a surge in demand for streaming video. With millions of children sitting at home in front of computers, rather than sitting in classrooms in front of teachers, their screen-time has doubled in the past year.

For parents who are working tirelessly to protect their children from graphic programming, the challenge has never been greater. It is no longer a matter of knowing what is on a handful of broadcast or cable networks during a given time of day. Launching Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, or any one of dozens of streaming apps, gives a child instantaneous access to a virtually unlimited catalogue of programming. It is not feasible or realistic to expect a parent to be familiar with all of the available titles on any ONE streaming service, let alone the content on EACH of those titles.

With such a massive amount of explicit content – both in volume and degree – now being streamed on demand to Smart TVs, Computer Screens, Cell Phones and myriad other devices, any vigorous solution demands input from all stakeholders to recommend, adopt and implement industry-wide best practices for parental controls.

That’s why I am joining with other concerned parents, grandparents and consumers to urge you to participate in a “virtual town hall” hosted by the PTC on Tuesday, June 8^th, 2021 to discuss what those best practices should be.

I, and other subscribers and potential future subscribers will be watching closely to see what you will do to better protect our children.

Sincerely,