United States pay television content advisory system

[2] Used with standard age-based ratings issued per the Motion Picture Association film rating system and the TV Parental Guidelines, the system incorporates ten "content descriptors" (up to six of which can be used for an individual program) providing detailed information about the types of objectionable content contained in a motion picture or television program being aired on a particular service, including categories covering sexual content; different levels of violence, profanity and nudity; and a general-purpose category covering crude and mature humor, innuendo and/or the use of alcoholic beverages, tobacco products or drugs.

While bearing similarities to the content sub-ratings added to the TV Parental Guidelines in July 1997, the advisories in this system are relatively more succinct in ascribing the mature material incorporated into a program.

Within the United States, Comedy Central—which operates as a basic cable channel—has assigned "Graphic Language" advisory indicators for content bumpers on select TV-MA-rated original series (including South Park and Workaholics).

[1][3][4][5] The initial system adopted by the pay services of Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO and Cinemax) and Showtime Networks (Showtime, The Movie Channel and Flix) on March 1, 1994, consisted strictly of descriptive text outlining the mature material included the following telecast; the cooperative members featured the indicators—which initially differed slightly between the two parent companies—in the rating bumpers immediately preceding each program.

On June 10, 1994, the Home Box Office and Showtime Networks services introduced a revised, uniform system: a set of block icons incorporating one of ten content codes—each two-to-three letters in length, and displayed in bold Fixedsys type—was added to supplement the applicable descriptive text, which was uniformly featured in a separate "page" of the rating bumper.

(Since Home Box Office, Inc. adopted the practice in 2015, most premium services—except the Showtime Networks, which previously used the style from June 1994 to March 1995—have used a bumper format displaying the age-based rating, content advisories and audio/visual accessibility features on a single page.