Children’s TV Panel Tunes In to Parent Role : Programming: Industry executives are urged by youth advocates and academics to see the medium’s influence in a different way--and adults at home are asked to take control.

“It takes a whole village to raise a child, and today that village is television,” said Newton Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Minow’s comment was made before a gathering of about 100 television executives, children’s rights advocates and academics who met at Stanford University Friday and Saturday to discuss the role of television in shaping children’s values.

After two days of sometimes heated conference sessions, a conference committee recommended mobilizing greater parental involvement in children’s viewing habits. In addition, it urged that those who create children’s programming be encouraged to share their knowledge of child development and viewing habits with producers of prime-time shows that children watch most.

“We are issuing a wake-up call to the nation’s parents to say, ‘Take control of television,’ ” said Milton Chen, director of the Center for Education at KQED, a public television station in San Francisco. “Parents are kids’ first and most important teachers.”

The conference, sponsored by the children’s advocacy group Children Now, was convened to open a dialogue between child advocates and television industry leaders and attempt to inspire those in charge of programming to do right by the nation’s youth.

“What we’re trying to do is challenge (TV executives) to see their role in a different way, ask them to think about what they do, and see if they can be part of the solution, rather than the problem,” said Minow.

Nearly everybody acknowledged a national crisis in values and contended that television played a role in exacerbating it, but where to go from there remained a sticking point.

“Kids love television,” said Richard Frank, chairman of Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications and president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “But what they see on it is, in a word, confusing. The fact is that there are a lot of things that American TV is doing right, but . . . there are a lot of things it is doing wrong.”

Of particular concern to conference organizers and other children’s rights groups was the kind of values and messages being conveyed on prime-time shows, particularly those that are the most popular among children.

Frank may have been the only television executive to publicly agree that television is sending youths mixed signals. That point was reinforced last week by results from a poll, commissioned by Children Now, of 750 children.

The survey found that a majority of young people believe that television encourages them to take part in sexual activity too soon, to show disrespect for their parents, to lie and to engage in aggressive behavior. The poll also indicated that children say people are responsible for their actions and are mostly moral.

Most television executives seemed willing to listen to what scholarly researchers, children’s rights’ groups and children themselves had to say.

“We don’t always pay attention when we’re creating (prime-time) shows to what kids are getting out of it,” said William Allen, president of MTM Entertainment and co-chair of a television industry group called the National Council for Families and Television.

“I think at a certain point we have to take responsibility to give some thought to these issues that the community is very much concerned with,” said Ralph Farquahar, a television writer who created the show “South Central.” “Some fear ‘quality programming’ means censorship. To me, it means the opposite. Quality programming means opening the doors, to be more inclusive to help people in general, not only children, form better perceptions of the world they live in. That should be the goal.”

Some industry executives spoke up defensively about television programming in general, others expressed fears of censorship, and still others advised the audience to avoid leveling accusations.

“I think you’ll get a positive reaction if you approach us with a positive attitude,” said George Vradenberg, executive vice president of Fox Inc. “I get the notion from advocacy groups that some see television as a hostile force.”

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Though few would deny the pervasiveness of television, there was continuing debate as to the extent of the medium’s power.

“To make television the whipping boy for all society’s ills is patently ludicrous,” said Dick Wolf, president of Wolf Films and executive producer of “Law and Order.”

“I honestly believe networks are run by people with a real set of values,” said Ted Harbert, president of ABC Entertainment. “But if you don’t think your child can deal with these shows and handle them properly, then turn off the TV.”

Both Harbert and Wolf noted that they limited their children’s viewing of prime-time programs.

Several of those in attendance, some of whom were responsible for scholarly research of the medium, expressed their admiration for the potential of television, while others expressed harsh criticism of existing programming.

“The tragedy is we’ve allowed that electronic baby-sitter to grow and grow and grow in its power until it has supplanted parents,” said Elizabeth Thoman, director of the Center for Media Literacy. “Now we wake up 40 years later and say, ‘How did this happen?’ ”

The conference brought together a disparate group of academic researchers, children’s advocacy groups, executives from ABC, MTM, Fox, Showtime, Nickelodeon and Universal as well as creators of such popular children’s shows as “The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and “Barney and Friends” and prime-time teen favorites such as “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “My So-Called Life.”

Discussions occasionally grew heated when verbal shots were taken at the glitzy unreality of “Beverly Hills, 90210” and the images portrayed in the Power Rangers show.

The liveliest panel involved teens discussing their viewing habits and offering suggestions to television programmers.

Four local young people, ranging from ages 12 to 17, said they mostly watched situation comedies and escapist fare, as well as some shows that dealt with real-life problems, but resisted programs that talked down to them or delivered trite messages.

“It really does have an effect on younger kids. My sister and brother run around the house as Power Rangers,” said Sarah Rabelli, 12. “Please try to find out what’s wrong and fix it.”

Disney’s Frank suggested that the television industry is capable of taking positive action in improving the quality of television and should regard as a precedent-setting example the industrywide effort of recent years to deglamorize portrayals of drug use.

“Just as television was once an enabler of the nation’s drug problem, I believe, to some extent it may today be an enabler of some of the problems afflicting our nation’s youth,” Frank said.