Kids Deserve Better, Broader Choice of Videos--Activist

Children’s television activist Peggy Charren gets discouraged by the selection of children’s videos that she finds at most stores. She finds plenty of Disney tapes and cartoon videos, but not much else.

“There should be as much choice in a video store as in a good children’s library,” she says. “And choice means junk and quality, and cartoons and movies.”

Charren founded Action for Children’s Television to lobby for better children’s television shows. She has campaigned against television cartoon shows that are based on toys, such as He-Man and Transformers, because she thinks that they are little more than lengthy commercials for the toys. She isn’t happy when those programs turn up on videocassette.

“I can’t understand why anyone would buy those tapes,” she said in a telephone interview. “If they love them that much, they can just tape them from the TV.”

Charren says she is a fan of videocassettes and encourages their use, even in her own family. Her 2-year-old granddaughter has learned dozens of songs from watching videocassette tapes, she says. “And children aren’t couch potatoes when they watch the tapes. They get up and move with the songs.”

But Charren says that too often parents overlook what she calls “quality” videocassettes and reach instead for the more heavily promoted animated tapes. She says her favorite cassette selections for children are “Dr. DeSoto and Other Stories” by Children’s Circle Home Video, “The Snowman” by Sony Video, “Kids in Motion,” an exercise tape by Playhouse Video, and “The Red Balloon,” by Embassy Home Video.

Charren says parents should encourage video retails to carry a broader selection of tapes for children.

“If we aren’t careful, the only thing we’ll be able to get on videocassette are Disney and Sesame Street,” she says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with them--some of the Disney films are magnificent--but it wouldn’t be much of a library.”