from www.freep.com - Ford said Wednesday it has a solution for parents who want to listen to radio shock jock Howard Stern, Playboy Radio and other explicit satellite-radio stations while driving, but want to block their teenagers from doing the same.
Ford said it will introduce technology that can block stations that Sirius XM Radio identifies as explicit starting next year on its Ford Explorer SUV and Ford Taurus sedan. Eventually, Ford said, it will be standard on most of its vehicles as part of its MyKey system.
Sirius XM identifies 16 channels as explicit and gives its subscribers the option of excluding those channels by calling a toll-free number and requesting a family plan.
But doing that would block those channels all the time, said Ford spokesman Wes Sherwood.
"What we like about MyKey is it gives parents options, and it encourages conversations among the families," Sherwood said.
Sirius XM's 16 explicit channels also include a channel called Hip-Hop Nation, a punk rock channel called Faction and a channel called Liquid Metal that sometimes features extreme versions of heavy metal rock music.
Launched in the summer of 2009, Ford's MyKey system was originally designed to help parents encourage safe teen driving habits. The programmable key can limit a vehicle's top speed, the volume of the audio system and can mute the radio until the driver and passenger put on their seatbelt and is standard on most Ford vehicles today.
Ford said a recent survey revealed that nearly 60% of parents with teens said they view a feature that can block adult radio programming on satellite radio as important.
"Parents obviously like this type of feature, and many teens are OK with it when they hear parents may give them the keys more often if the car comes with a technology such as Ford's MyKey," Graydon Reitz, Ford's director of electrical and electronic systems engineering, said in a statement.
