Few Moguls Expected at Kids-TV Summit

Remember the headline-making Feb. 29 White House summit on TV violence and the V-chip, where a roomful of television moguls lined up alongside Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner to announce the first ratings system for TV?

The White House summit Monday on children’s television is likely to feature far fewer high-voltage names--and no immediate change in the networks’ continuing opposition to a government plan to require broadcasters to air three hours of educational programming for children each week.

Broadcasters maintain that, as one executive put it, “we’re being unfairly being beaten up on” on the children’s issue. And some executives say privately they feel they’re being “used” as high-powered props for President Clinton’s campaign.

Clinton is a longtime supporter of the three-hour-a-week standard, but the Federal Communications Commission can’t agree on guidelines.

The broadcast networks have quietly decided to send representatives associated with children’s programming to the summit--not the highly visible CEOs who agreed to a TV-ratings system.

Geraldine Laybourne, who is president of Disney/ABC cable networks and the former president of the Nickelodeon cable network for children, is the most prominent broadcast executive who has agreed to attend, according to the networks’ responses to inquiries from The Times.

Fox said that its sole representative will be Margaret Loesch, president of Fox Children’s Network. CBS has not decided whom it will send. An executivesaid NBC is sending Peter Engel, an independent producer (“Saved By the Bell”) who produces some of NBC’s teen-oriented sitcoms and is associated with NBC Productions.

If the FCC has not acted to end the children’s TV stalemate by the time of the summit, Heidi Kus, a spokeswoman for Vice President Al Gore, said, “the president and vice president will reiterate” their support of the three-hour guidelines.

“Maybe the summit will help lead [FCC Chairman] Reed Hundt to offer more flexible guidelines,” Commissioner James Quello said.

“Our proposals are flexible,” Hundt’s chief of staff, Blair Levin, countered.