It really isn't:

Family crowds spoke louder than fans of racy stories or shoot-'em-up action flicks last year at movie theaters, with PG-rated films hauling in more money than R-rated ones for the first time in 20 years.

PG titles grossed $2.3 billion domestically, compared to $2.1 billion for R-rated films, according to figures released Tuesday by the National Association of Theatre Owners. PG-13 movies did the most business with $4.4 billion.

Five of 2004's top-10 moneymakers were rated PG, which means they were open to all audiences, among them "Shrek 2," "The Incredibles" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." Out of the top 25, only four carried R ratings, which prohibit those younger than 17 from attending unless accompanied by an adult.

The headline (PG Movies Beat R-Rated Films For First Time In 20 Years) is actually quite misleading. Movies with a rating of less than R have outperformed R rated movies for years:

One of the fundamentals of the idea that they're just giving the public what it wants is the fact that over 60 percent of all movies released in the United States are rated R -- are drenched in violence, graphic sexuality and rather unpleasant language -- and that that's the only kind of movie that does business. Hollywood has been saying for years that you have to put this material into even innocuous movies, otherwise you're dead in the water at the box office.

This was conventional wisdom in Hollywood for a long time. It was such strongly held conventional wisdom that it was almost in passing that I decided to do something which I don't think anyone had ever done before, which was check it out, to see if was true. What I was hoping to find was that the bias in favor of R-rated films in terms of box office performance wouldn't be that great -- that PG films might do almost as well as R films, showing that Hollywood wasn't simply following the market. I did my initial computer study, based on every movie released in 1991 -- and 600 of them were released that year -- and their domestic box office gross.

When the statistics came back, my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe what I had found. According to my numbers, in 1991, when 61 percent of all movies were rated R, PG movies, which are aimed at family audiences, did three times better at the box office then R-rated films.

I was so stunned by this that I needed to check myself. I actually submitted this entire project to the research director for the Screen Actors Guild, who is a very skilled Hollywood researcher. I said, "Will you check this, because it doesn't sound right?'' He came back and said "It's exactly right. I'm fascinated with this right now. Do you mind if I work with you and we go ahead and check it out in previous years to see what has happened?'' So we went back 10 years and analyzed movies released in the United States.

Do you know what's incredible? What's incredible is that there isn't a single year -- not one -- since 1983 in which PG movies haven't done substantially better on average than R-rated films. In fact, they averaged more than 2-to-1 larger domestic box office grosses. And during that time period the percentage of R-rated films, which were doing worse at the box office during the whole 10-year period, went up from 46 percent of all films released to 61 percent in 1991 and, by some estimates, to 65 percent last year, 1992.

It looks like 2004 is no exception to the rule. The 2004 article states that the total domestic revenues were $9.5 billion which means movies rated less than 'R' brought in approximately 78% of the revenue, while the mature audience films received the remaining 22%.

So, what is the point? Well, the point is that there are plenty of R-rated movies which could easily be made PG by simply toning down the language a bit and making the oh so necessary sex scene an implied one instead of completely spelling everything out. Why do this? Because those films would make more money.

I'm not say that I believe Hollywood should not produce any R-rated films. There is a definitely a market for them and there are subjects where toning down the sex, language or violence would adversely affect the movie.

What I can't figure out is the number of films produced that only receive their adult rating because of content which is superfluous to the movie itself. It seems like a bonehead move, like putting puke green carpet in a house just prior to selling it. It just doesn't make sense (to me at least) to intentionally reduce your own market and profit.