To boost kids’ TV, major networks should help fund public broadcasting | Opinion

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to “modernize” rules for television to give broadcasters more flexibility in children’s programming obligations. If you’re like most Americans, you’re probably unaware that stations like ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX are even required — by its “Kid Vid” rules — to provide anything for children, let alone educational and informational (E/I) programming. You are probably also unaware that they have been required to do so for nearly three decades, since the passage of the Children’s Television Act of 1990.

I have been studying broadcasters’ response to this law since 1997, when the FCC mandated that stations air at least 3 hours per week of educational shows to receive expedited license renewal. I was then, and remain today, unimpressed with the educational value of the shows offered. After systematically evaluating broadcasters’ E/I offerings from 1995-2000, I found that few were substantially educational. A significant proportion lacked any educational lesson at all. In fact, one program listed as E/I in the Philadelphia market was the cartoon Jumanji, which, FCC filings showed, was intended to teach children “jungle life skills.”

More recent research found similar dubious claims, though we will no longer know what those claims are because, with this new ruling, broadcasters won’t have to list their educational goals.

One might think three hours a week sounds like a significant amount of time for kids’ programming for a network. But as FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel noted, this is less than 2% of the total broadcast time in any given week. It’s unlikely that even this tiny amount will grace the airwaves in coming months, since the new ruling allows broadcasters to send up to 1/3 of their programs into the multicast — the digital-era station’s extra channels that run alongside their main TV channel but get very little viewership, and which are still unavailable to millions of households.

Additionally, broadcasters will be able to fill time with short-form programming, such as irregularly scheduled after-school specials. And the new FCC ruling allows children’s shows to be preempted by local programming, like sports and parades.

I suppose I would be more upset by the ruling if I felt that children and parents would experience a loss of educational opportunities. But the reality is that most of the offerings are already weak, and often not even intended for a child audience. It took me several hours and many phone calls to find out what Philadelphia broadcasters are airing as E/I, and in many cases I came to a dead end with broken links and filled voice mail boxes. What I did find was disappointing — stations fill their hours with nature and animal shows like CBS’s Rock the Park or inspiration shows like NBC’s The Champion Within. The programs are innocuous enough, but none could claim serious educational value.

It’s all the more disappointing because at first, the Children’s Television Act did help push licensees to provide enriching content for children who might have few resources. In 1997, when the FCC began to hold broadcasters more accountable for serving the child audience, observers like myself hoped it would usher in a new era of creative educational content. For a while, we saw innovative programming like Brand Spanking New Doug, which thoughtfully addressed relevant issues for young adolescents such as self-esteem, bullying, and peer pressure, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, which had a clear curriculum and hands-on exercises that could be done at home. Soon enough, however, broadcasters began abandoning the child audience for more lucrative adult audiences, and seemed to just care about filling up space.

I don’t believe broadcasters will ever take their responsibilities to the child audience seriously enough. But that doesn’t mean they should be let off the hook. Instead, the FCC should consider a radical proposal: Let broadcasters pay into a fund that supports public broadcasting. Let’s abandon the farce that commercial broadcasters care about children, and instead support the platform that truly does: PBS.

Loosening the obligations of broadcasters will not make the world a better place for children to live and learn. But strengthening the system that has delivered Sesame Street for 50 years and innovates with programs like SciGirls and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood most certainly will.

Amy B. Jordan, Ph.D., lives in Philadelphia and is a professor of media studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.