Hearings Starting on Children’s TV : Action Not a Certainty, but Proceedings Signal Change

A House subcommittee begins hearing proposals today to return children’s television to the protective custody of government regulation, reversing the controversial view of the Reagan-era Federal Communications Commission that kids’ TV is best left to the open marketplace.

Although congressional action is not a certainty, the proceeding is one of several signs of a drastic change taking place in children’s television.

Just a year ago, it seemed that children’s television was given over to the deal makers and toy manufacturers, who had found in “kidvid” a lucrative marketplace for cartoon shows that were based on toys. But now, children’s television activists--long frustrated in the era of deregulation--can claim important victories in court, where a federal panel instructed the FCC to reconsider its deregulation of children’s TV, and on Capitol Hill, where there is new enthusiasm for taking on the broadcast industry.

The most significant change, though, has come from children themselves, who have switched from the weekday-afternoon shows based on superhero toys and high-tech gadgets to sitcom-style cartoons. Instead of “Challenge of the Go-Bots” and “Thundercats,” children are tuning in to “DuckTales,” a new Disney show about a mischievous group of ducks that is this season’s hit, and an animated “Dennis the Menace.”

In short, their changing viewing habits have turned the multibillion-dollar children’s programming industry on its ear. Just when toy-based cartoons were most plentiful, late in 1986, ratings for children’s television began a sudden plummet, dropping by nearly one-third. Broadcasters see this as evidence that the FCC’s faith in the open marketplace was justified. Children’s TV activists contend that regulation is needed anyway.

The shift in children’s viewing was so sudden and resounding that an entire industry was left “breathless,” said Steve Bell, general manager of KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles.

So what does the future of children’s television look like? It’s beginning to look a lot like the past. Now in the works for syndication are new episodes of the classic “Gumby,” a repackaging of “Yogi Bear” and a new daily Disney show starring Chip and Dale.

Most surprising is the return of real people to children’s television, for so long the province of animation. The huge success of the children’s game show “Double Dare,” first on the cable channel Nickelodeon, now in broadcast syndication, has inspired numerous knockoffs as well as proposals for kids’ variety shows and action-adventure serials, including a new “Zorro,” for next fall.

This retreat toward programming for programming’s sake should please the critics of toy-based programming, who decried such shows as cleverly packaged commercials masquerading as programs.

“They (the critics) are going to love it,” predicted Tom Kenney, vice president of the New York media agency Bohbot and Cohn, speaking of the new turn in children’s TV. “It’s pure programming--it’s not product-related, it’s not product-driven.”

For now, children’s television advocates are reserving judgment. Though they welcome the change in children’s taste, some see it as just that rather than the end of toy-based programming. They say the glut of action-adventure shows simply wore thin with children or divided their viewing to such an extent that no show could survive.

Peggy Charren, who has led the campaign against so-called program-length commercials as president of Action for Children’s Television, said she believes the toy companies are merely regrouping.

“If we don’t get what we want,” she said, referring to proposed government action, “we think the toy industry will go to the broadcasters with a whole new set of shows that is more attractive to the audience. We’ll have 70 whole new shows.”

The debate over the commercialization of kidvid began with the FCC decision in 1984 to throw children’s television into the free-for-all of the open marketplace. The commission, without discussion, abandoned its longstanding guidelines limiting commercial minutes in children’s programs, opening the airwaves to shows featuring toys and other children’s products that once risked regulatory challenge.

At the same time, scores of new independent stations in need of inexpensive programs were cropping up. Toy companies filled the void with costly first-run animation at bargain rates--sometimes for nothing--through deals that allowed them to retain some advertising time. In some instances, stations got a share of the profits from the toy sales.

The success of early toy-based shows such as “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” and “Transformers” spawned dozens of imitators, to the dismay of activists, whose campaign to curb the commercialization of the airwaves was rebuffed at every turn. Then, last June, the U.S. Appeals Court in Washington, ruling on a request by ACT, ordered the FCC to justify the deregulation of children’s TV and to hold an inquiry, which is currently ongoing, into the commercialization issue.

Shortly thereafter, the turnabout was hastened. In September, the same appeals court agreed with the Los Angeles-based National Assn. for Better Broadcasting that the “He-Man” show was sufficiently commercial to require KCOP Channel 13 to air a notice saying that the show is paid for and furnished by Mattel. The FCC has not yet responded to the decision.

Charren said she believes the FCC has no choice but to reregulate in light of the court’s decisions. “We think the FCC is in a Catch-22 situation,” she explained. “If they have to identify all these programs as commercial speech, then how can they say the marketplace is working?”

If the FCC doesn’t act, some think Congress might. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, recently told a conference of the National Assn. of Broadcasters that support for reregulating children’s television is growing in Congress.

A subcommittee of Dingell’s panel--the subcommittee on telecommunications and finance--begins hearing testimony today on a number of proposals. Observers agree that the most drastic of the measures, one that would require broadcasters to air seven hours of educational programming for children each week, stands little prospect of passing. The chances are better for another measure that would reimpose the old FCC guidelines and limit toy-based programming. The Assn. of Independent Television Stations has backed a third bill that would exempt the broadcast industry from antitrust laws so that it could draw its own commercial guidelines.

The refrain of broadcasters and television producers, who oppose reregulation on any front, is that the marketplace is working. They contend that young viewers immediately recognized the inferior shows that glutted the market shortly before the ratings dropped.

“Kids are the most discriminating audience,” said Steve Binder, a producer of prime-time specials as well as two shows that are among the cream in kids TV, CBS’ “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and the syndicated “Zoobilee Zoo.” “The good stuff stays and the bad stuff goes away--quickly.”

“I think one of the things the broadcasting industry learned over the last five years is that you just can’t go out and produce 65 episodes of animation and throw it at the wall and hope it sticks,” added John Claster of Claster Television, which distributes some of the most enduring of the toy-based programs, including the still popular “JEM,” “G. I. Joe” and “Transformers.” Claster’s firm, which is owned by the Hasbro toy company, is working on “C.O.P.S.,” the only cartoon tied to a major toy manufacturer that is being readied for fall.

The intensifying competition for young viewers, created by the growth in commercial stations as well as cable viewing and VCR use, is good for kids, broadcasters say. “Once the industry could get by with putting on something marginal and it didn’t much matter because kids had nowhere to go,” said Keith Samples, a vice president of Lorimar Telepictures. “The economics have forced the distributors and producers to be creative.”

What that means is that producers are looking for cheaper alternatives to the $18-million syndicated daily cartoons, which are no longer sure-fire hits. Game shows are expected to be big next fall, although the excitement over the program form has broadcasters wondering if there won’t be another glut like the one in action-adventure toy-based programs.

Nickelodeon, the new pioneer in live-action programming, is working on a talk show for kids as well as a kids’ court program. Others are experimenting with magazine shows for children and combining live action with animation, in the vein of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” Even the old-fashioned local cartoon show, with a host and in some cases a live studio audience, seems to be making a comeback; since November, two hosted cartoon shows have debuted on New York City stations.

“I think the next few years will be fun in kids television because I think kids will get the opportunity to see different things,” Samples said.

“I’ve seen in such a short time a market rise and fall, and out of it comes something new: better animation, more animation, first-run game shows, some of which look intriguing,” added KTLA’s Bell. “The marketplace has created some diversity that wasn’t there before. I think things are sort of just developing now after having gotten off track.”