PBS to Expand Children’s Shows, With Hipper Image

The Public Broadcasting Service today will announce a large new commitment to children’s programming, expanding it to nine hours a day and encouraging parents to make better use of the hours youngsters spend in front of the television.

Beginning in July, in 10 cities across the country, including Los Angeles, local PBS stations will broadcast about three more hours of children’s shows every day and repackage all educational programming to give it a hip, new image. Public television, which broadcasts the pioneering “Sesame Street,” will for the first time air all its children’s shows in large, uninterrupted blocks of time.

In the hope of competing with such popular shows as MTV’s “Beavis and Butt-head,” PBS plans to use animation, bright new logos, popular music and new children’s characters called “P-pals” throughout its programs and breaks. Educational messages will air during program breaks and aim to teach values and skills, such as how to share or stick with a task.

“There is no question that television teaches. The question is what it teaches. It can abuse. . . . And it can be a constructive powerful, research tool,” said project executive Jacqueline Weiss.

As part of a new emphasis on reaching out to parents and those who take care of children during the day, local PBS stations will hold community meetings on the best uses of television. They also will distribute workbooks and monthly calendars so working parents can talk to their children about what they watch. One month, for instance, programming might be geared toward the environment, and parents could be given vocabulary words, such as acid rain, to discuss with their children.

Along with Los Angeles, the nine other cities to air the new programming beginning in July are: New York; Boston; Washington; Oklahoma City; Atlanta; El Paso; St. Paul, Minn.; Toledo; and Carbondale, Ill. By 1995, 35 more stations and cities will be added.