Activists to Renew Efforts for Kids’ TV Legislation

A five-year, uphill battle by children’s television activists to return kids’ TV to the protected realm of federal regulation seemed near an end last fall, with victory tantalizingly within reach.

Legislation that restricted advertising in children’s television and that required broadcasters to serve the educational needs of young viewers had passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support. The bill even had the backing of the broadcasting industry, which had long resisted any move toward re-regulation.

Then on the Saturday night just before the November election, President Reagan quietly killed the Children’s Television Act of 1988 with a pocket veto, saying the measure interfered with the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech for broadcasters. It seemed almost an exclamation point to his Administration’s unbending policy that broadcasting’s open marketplace, rather than government, should decide what’s best for the public, including children.

Almost immediately, the drive for a new bill began.

With Reagan to be replaced by George Bush, who campaigned as “the education President,” there was never a doubt among activists and their allies in Congress that there would be another try at a children’s television bill. The question was: What should it be?

At the moment, that question is the subject of debate among longtime allies in the campaign to curb what’s seen as the commercialization of children’s broadcasting. One camp urges another pass at the bill that Reagan killed; another camp, dismissing that measure as symbolic but ineffective, wants to push for even more stringent regulation.

The Children’s Television Act of 1988 involved two major provisions. The first would have limited the amount of advertising during children’s programming (to 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10 1/2 minutes on weekends). More importantly, it would have required broadcasters to demonstrate at the time they sought to renew their federal operating license that their stations had “served the educational and informational needs of children in their overall programming.”

Getting that bill passed, says Peggy Charren, president of the consumer group Action for Children’s Television, would be enough for now.

“It was hard enough to get this bill as it was,” Charren says. “I don’t want to start from scratch and make the world perfect.”

Charren, a leader in the fight for legislation, maintains that in an era when license renewal has become a matter of mailing in a postcard, the threat of review was enough to force broadcasters to consider the quality of their children’s shows.

Another view is expressed by Dale Kunkel, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara, who says that Reagan’s veto, as disappointing as it was, presents “a window of opportunity” for even tougher legislation.

“What we need now is a clear statement that broadcasters must present programming for children,” Kunkel says.

Kunkel, who, with other university researchers, lobbied the Senate to add more bite to the bill last summer, says the 1988 legislation left a number of issues unresolved. For one, the bill did not address the issue of cartoons based on toys, or so-called program-length commercials, which had proliferated in the years following the Federal Communications Commission’s deregulation of children’s TV in 1984.

Kunkel also says that the provision relating to license renewal was vague and that the wording “overall programming” left too much to the interpretation of broadcasters.

“That gave them a loophole to count the family-oriented programs (for instance, “The Cosby Show”) as children’s programming,” he said. “These shows, they do have value. But they will be there without legislation.”

However the issue is finally framed, Charren believes that 1989 presents a particularly good opportunity for the passage of a children’s television bill because the broadcasting industry could be cooperative. With the industry undoubtedly battling Congress over several other key issues, such as the fairness doctrine and a proposed requirement that cable systems must carry broadcast signals, they might look upon a children’s TV bill as a good public-relations stance, Charren says.

“The broadcast industry today really has to prove it has a responsibility to the public trust,” she explains. “If it is just another business, you start making rules--rules regarding cable that could do in the broadcast industry.”

Bob Hallahan, spokesman for the National Assn. of Broadcasters, says his organization plans to work on children’s television legislation again with Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications. Still, Hallahan says it is “far too early to tell” whether the group would support any changes in the compromise arrived at in 1988.

Though he favors a tougher bill, says Henry Geller, director of the Washington Center for Public Policy Research, the reality of politics is such that a stronger bill might not be possible.

Attempts to strengthen the bill threaten the industry’s support, which would make any movement of legislation unlikely. Numerous efforts to draft children’s television measures in previous Congresses have languished in subcommittees for lack of the broadcaster’s backing.

“It has to be done with the broadcasters on board,” Geller says. “You can’t legislate in this field without consensus, that’s been proven.”