FCC WILL REVIEW KIDVID AD POLICY

The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to review its children’s television policies to decide whether limits should be reimposed on commercials and whether programs based on toy manufacturers’ products should be banned.

The inquiry also will cover new interactive toys that respond to inaudible signals beamed through TV sets during programs for which the toys were specially created, though the FCC said these shows “appear to add rather than subtract from the diversity of programming choices now available.”

Advocates for children’s TV welcomed the action but said they were disappointed that the FCC did not impose at least some commercial limits while the review takes place.

“It’s taken them too long to get to this point,” said Peggy Charren, president of Cambridge, Mass.-based Action for Children’s Television, which has asked the FCC to reimpose ad limits and to ban toy-based shows.

Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.), co-sponsor of a bill to increase children’s educational programming on TV, said the review is “long overdue.”

The review comes in response to an appeals court ruling last June that instructed the FCC to explain further its rationale for eliminating its longstanding commercial guidelines for children’s TV programs.

Those guidelines limited ads on children’s shows to 9 1/2 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes on weekdays. The limits were voluntary, but stations that did not comply invited FCC review.

The commission abandoned the guidelines in favor of letting market forces place constraints on advertising.

The FCC’s four sitting commissioners, who voted unanimously for the review, said they will focus on whether ad limits are needed and whether toy-based shows constitute program-length commercials.

“We’re looking at commercialization,” and specifically what constitutes commercial matter, said Diane Killory, FCC general counsel. “The simple fact that there is a toy (on which a program is based) doesn’t say there is a problem we should be concerned with.

“Today, we don’t have any evidence of harm” to children because of existing policies, she said, and added, “any time we get into content regulation we have to be concerned with the First Amendment” right to free speech.

She said the inquiry will not address whether toy manufacturers that produce cartoon shows should be required to identify themselves as sponsors of the shows. That issue, the subject of another appeals court ruling involving the telecast of “He-Man” on KCOP Channel 13 in Los Angeles, will be handled separately, she said.