Digital TV, Kids Groups in Deal

After trading lawsuits this fall, children advocacy groups and entertainment industry representatives have agreed on new rules for digital television that would require broadcasters to expand children’s educational TV programming and limit the use of the Internet for promotional tie-ins.

In return, broadcasters would be allowed greater flexibility to preempt the educational shows for live sports on weekends. TV station owners also would be allowed to broadcast commercials promoting other children’s shows without those ads counting against a 12-to-10 1/2 -minute cap on paid advertising that can be shown during educational programs.

The compromise, announced Thursday, recommends revising a controversial Federal Communications Commission regulation that takes effect next month and threatens to hinder the ability of some TV networks to air live sports on the weekends. The agreement would also remove a potential obstacle to the nationwide transition to digital television technology and would take effect March 1, if approved by the FCC.

“This is a very good deal for kids,” said Martin D. Franks, executive vice president for CBS Television. CBS had threatened to cancel its weekend sports programming and joined ABC parent Walt Disney Co. in October to file a lawsuit challenging the FCC’s children’s television rules.

The new accord was reached with Oakland-based Children Now and other advocacy groups.

“The key piece of this is providing access to educational programming because we know it has great benefits for children,” said Patti Miller, vice president of Children Now.

Under current regulations, television broadcasters are required to air three hours a week of educational programming for children 16 years and under between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Children’s shows airing Saturday that networks count toward that include ABC’s “The Proud Family” and Nickelodeon’s “Blue’s Clues,” which airs on many CBS stations.

That requirement broadens next month when broadcasters will have to supply three hours of children’s programming on each of the up to five digital channels they can multicast using digital technology.

Companies with a big presence on the Internet, such as Disney and Time Warner Inc., also had sought the flexibility to use children’s TV show characters on their websites. However, the practice would be limited to portions of websites that aren’t prominent if Web addresses are shown during children’s shows that include the characters.

Two top FCC aides, who declined to speak on the record because the agency had not yet formally reviewed the agreement, said the FCC would probably postpone the Jan. 1 start date of children’s TV rules to study the agreement. Both aides said it was likely that the agreement would be approved with only slight modifications.

Separately, Time Warner Cable, responding to another hot-button FCC issue, said it would begin selling a package of 15 television channels for families in response to pressure from regulators seeking to clean up cable content.

The company is making available the Family Choice Tier in digital cable. Stations will include Food Network, Discovery Channel, CNN Headline News, the Science Channel and Discovery Kids. Time Warner Cable said it chose channels that aired G-rated content 24 hours a day.

The family package will cost $12.99 a month on top of basic service. Consumers who don’t already subscribe to Time Warner’s digital service will need a new set-top box that costs $7.95 a month.

Time Warner, Comcast Corp. and four other cable operators said this week that they would offer the packages. The FCC is studying whether it can force companies to sell channels on an individual, a la carte basis, so that cable subscribers can elect not to receive channels featuring shows they find offensive.

Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.