Deal Reported on TV Programs for Children

After years of opposition, the nation’s television broadcasters are expected to announce today that they have agreed to a government plan requiring them to provide three hours of educational programming for children per week.

Sources close to an intense weekend of talks between federal officials and the broadcasters said Sunday that President Clinton will announce the agreement during a White House “summit” on children’s television.

The TV industry’s new stance is expected to end a stalemate within the Federal Communications Commission, where Chairman Reed Hundt, a Clinton appointee, has been trying for two years to mandate three hours per week to fulfill the Children’s Television Act passed by Congress in 1990.

Broadcasters have opposed any specifying of programming hours in the past, calling it an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. But support for the rule has been growing in Congress and among the public, finally leading industry officials to concede on an issue where, as one TV executive put it, “We’re being perceived as ‘anti-kid.’ ”

Under the plan, the three-hour requirement would be monitored as part of the process of renewing TV-station licenses.

Stations determined by the FCC to meet the standard will have renewal virtually guaranteed. But, in a compromise, stations that provide somewhat less than three hours of educational shows per week will be able to count some public-service announcements and TV specials to help them meet the requirement.

Under the plan, the shows must air between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., a move designed to keep stations from airing low-rated educational shows in “fringe” time periods when children would not see them.

The agreement gives Clinton a victory on a highly visible issue in his reelection campaign. The scheduling of today’s meeting, which will be attended by children’s TV producers and executives, had increased pressure on the administration to end the unexpected FCC deadlock on the issue.

Clinton administration officials met through the weekend with representatives of the National Assn. of Broadcasters. There were also phone calls and faxes traveling among the White House, the major broadcast networks, the NAB and the staff of the FCC in an effort to hammer out an agreement.

According to sources involved in the negotiations, broadcasters wanted to remove the plan’s emphasis on requiring them to air weekly TV series for children, offering instead language that would count any shows that are “regularly scheduled.” Hundt and other supporters of the requirements rejected that compromise.

“Chairman Hundt and [FCC] Commissioner Susan Ness [a Hundt ally on the plan] deserve praise for resisting tremendous pressure to weaken these rules,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), the author of the Children’s Television Act.

Hundt and Commissioner James Quello have had a highly publicized dispute in recent weeks over the proposals. Quello--a longtime ally of the networks in their opposition to mandated hours--reversed himself this spring, saying that he would support a three-hour guideline, thereby giving Hundt a majority on the panel.

Quello, however, angrily withdrew his support last month, saying the requirements spelled out in Hundt’s plan would put the TV industry in a regulatory “straight-jacket” for the future.

But with the TV industry and children’s TV advocates both signing on to the compromise plan, Quello and Rachellecq Chong, the fourth FCC commissioner, are considered unlikely to oppose the measure when it is presented to the FCC.