Kids Groups and Digital TV Strikes a Deal
Children's advocacy groups and media industry representatives struck a deal to provide more educational programming for children. The deal would also limit the use of the Internet for promotional tie-ins. Under current rules, TV broadcasters must air 3 hours a week of educational programming for children 16 years of age or younger. Next month, new FCC rules will take effect that mandate 3 hours of educational programming on each of the five channels that networks can multicast using digital technology. These rules may limit networks' ability to air live sports, among other things.
The deal between children's groups and networks allows companies to preempt educational programming for live sports as well as promote other children's shows without having it count towards the time limit on paid advertising during educational shows. In addition, many media companies have started offering family channel packages.
This need for educational programming validates the work we've been doing all semester. The kidspace is in sore need of media properties that intellectually and socially enrich kids. These properties increasingly need to be able transmit across different media, as is evidenced in this article by the desire of media companies to transport kids' TV characters on the Web. It's interesting how the technological advancement of digital TV is bringing this discussion to the forefront. Parents now have more power to limit what their kids watch. And if the FCC allows channel purchasing on a channel by channel basis, which they're currently looking into, this could have far-reaching implications for how our children grow up.
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