TV’S IMPACT: PART OF A BIGGER PICTURE : Decisions by the Powers Behind the Screen Affect Everyone--From Santa Claus to Terrorists to Pregnant Women : GROUP SEES HANG-UPS IN ‘SANTA’ CALLS

Television can be an expensive baby sitter.

That was the message from a consumer activist group which asked the federal government on Tuesday to clamp down on televised advertisements for telephone numbers such as “dial-a-Santa” that lure young children to make phone calls totaling hundreds of dollars a month.

In a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission, the organization known as Action for Children’s Television said children are encouraged to make the calls and are unaware of the cost involved.

“This complaint is about the economics of telling children to make calls,” said Peggy Charren, president of ACT. She said her group’s complaint is aimed at reducing the incentives to have young children make these calls, and is not challenging the content of the telephone messages that the children receive when they dial.

“Children can’t determine the role of telephone bills in the family’s disposable income,” Charren said in an interview. “Children don’t pay attention to the barrier that price provides against desire.”

The complaint by the group, which is based in Newtonville, Mass., focuses on the 976 telephone numbers that are being leased by telephone companies to private individuals and groups for dial-a-service advertising ranging from weather and theater information to stories for children.

As one example, Charren cited an advertisement that was broadcast last December on a New Orleans television station showing two small children listening to Santa Claus tell a story. When he was finished, Santa told the children that they could dial 976-KIDS every day until Christmas for additional stories read by Santa and Mrs. Claus.

In its filing, ACT complained that some children have made calls totaling as much as $200 a month unknown to their parents. The group asked the FTC either to ban such telephone advertising or to require that the burden for paying the calls be shifted to the advertiser.

According to Charren, making the advertiser accountable would require that the telephone company add a discloser to individual bills showing what portion of the monthly calls was attributed to these special telephone numbers that children could call.

If parents said that they did not authorize the calls, ACT said that the advertiser should have to pay for them. ACT proposed that the telephone company bill these unwanted calls directly to the advertiser.

“Somebody has to be responsible; we think it should be the vendor,” she said.

Charren also said that the FTC’s intervention is important for consumers because telephone charges are more difficult to understand now that phone customers receive separate local and long-distance telephone bills.

She also said that dial-a-service calls are hard for parents to halt, especially where there are latch-key children home alone.

“You can’t tell your kids not to make any phone calls.”

“The telephone is the lifeline for children who are home alone.”