Congress Expected to Pass Children’s TV Measure

Barring unlikely roadblocks in the House, Congress is expected to deliver landmark children’s television legislation to President Bush within days. The action would mark the second time in less than two years that Congress has conveyed to a Republican President its contention that children’s television should occupy a special, protected corner of the communications marketplace.

President Ronald Reagan, whose deregulation-minded Federal Communications Commission lifted long-standing commercial guidelines from children’s television in 1984, vetoed a similar legislative package in 1988, saying it violated First Amendment free speech rights.

Since then, congressional sponsors, broadcast industry representatives and consumer activists have been negotiating to come up with a children’s television measure that could make its way through Congress and survive any presidential qualms regarding re-regulation.

On Thursday night, the Senate passed that bill on a unanimous voice vote. House leaders agreed to drop their children’s television measure in favor of the more comprehensive Senate version, which is expected to be voted on by the House before Congress recesses at the end of the month, said Mike Connolly, spokesman for the House telecommunications and finance subcommittee.

The consensus bill re-establishes limits on commercials in children’s programming, on broadcast as well as cable TV channels--limiting ads to 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10 1/2 minutes on weekends. Most broadcasters and cable operators already meet those guidelines.

It also creates the National Endowment for Children’s Television, which would administer federal grants to produce children’s TV shows. The programs must be shown for two years on PBS stations before airing elsewhere.

But the most significant provision in the bill, according to its architects, is one that directs broadcasters to meet the “educational and informational needs” of children in their overall programming, including programming specifically designed to meet such needs. Broadcasters would have to document how they satisfied the requirement when renewing their FCC licenses. In recent years, license renewal had evolved into a matter of mailing in a postcard.

The National Assn. of Broadcasters lauded the bill in a statement released Friday, saying it “protects children from overcommercialization in their TV and cable programs while acknowledging that advertising is what makes these programs possible.’

A White House spokesman said that the Administration has not yet taken a position on reregulating children’s television.