Children’s TV Bill Will Become Law Without Bush’s Signature

A bill limiting advertisements on children’s television programs will become law without President Bush’s signature, the White House announced Wednesday.

The measure, passed by Congress Oct. 1, would limit commercials to 12 minutes per hour during the week and 10 1/2 minutes per hour on weekends. The restrictions apply to both over-air and cable broadcasters.

The bill also would require stations to show that they are meeting the educational and information needs of children as a requirement of having their licenses renewed.

Bush had objected to the restrictions, reflecting his Administration’s general opposition to government regulation as well as Justice Department reservations about the constitutionality of the bill. But in the end, the White House decided against vetoing the highly popular measure. As a symbol of his dislike for the measure, however, Bush decided that he would not sign it.

The broadcast industry, although not happy with the bill, did not actively lobby for a veto.

“I wholeheartedly support” the goals of the bill, Bush said in a statement released Wednesday evening. But, he wrote: “Congress has chosen inappropriate means of serving them.”

The new limits on advertising will have little effect on broadcasters, most of whom are already limiting commercials to roughly the amounts allowed by the new law. But the provision requiring station owners to demonstrate the adequacy of their efforts to serve children’s educational needs could become a major issue for the industry, depending on how actively the Federal Communications Commission tries to enforce it.

Justice Department lawyers argued that the new rule on children’s educational needs violates the 1st Amendment of the Constitution by dictating the specific content of what broadcasters put on the air or on cable systems.

In the past, the Supreme Court has upheld content-based regulation of broadcasters--provisions such as the “fairness doctrine” and the political equal time rule--on the theory that broadcast frequencies are a scarce, publicly owned resource that the government has the right to allocate.

Some broadcast industry lawyers--and conservative officials of both the Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations--have argued that the “scarcity doctrine” is now obsolete because of new technologies that have made the number of stations theoretically unlimited. The Supreme Court has never reviewed the scarcity doctrine in light of those new technologies, although many communications lawyers expect the issue eventually to reach the justices.

Bush had until midnight Wednesday to veto the bill, sign it or allow it to become law without his signature. Under the Constitution, when Congress is in session, a bill becomes law if the President takes no action within 10 days of receiving it.