Word: charren
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week the legislation ran afoul of President Reagan. Stating that the bill "cannot be reconciled" with constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, Reagan refused to sign it. His pocket veto infuriated lobbyists like Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, who called Reagan's refusal a form of "ideological child abuse." Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts, a co-sponsor of the House bill, said 20% of U.S. television stations exceed the proposed limits on commercials. He plans to reintroduce the measure next year and hopes for a more favorable response from the new Administration...
...educational fare for kids. The National Association of Broadcasters, while not fond of the measure, says it will not oppose it. Meanwhile, children's TV activists are claiming a victory -- barely. "As far as commercials are concerned, it says children are different from adults," notes Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television. "But any more changes and I would have called the bill a sellout...
...most controversial area, however, is toy-inspired shows, which are criticized by children's TV activists as little more than program-length commercials. "Where is it written that Mattel should control the decision making in programming for children's TV?" says Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, the watchdog group based in Cambridge, Mass. "People who want to produce children's programs with something to say instead of something to sell are zapped out of the system...
...Soldiers of the Future. The show, a live-action space adventure, enables children to play along at certain points by shooting at villains on-screen with a special Power Jet weapon (cost: $30 to $40). An electronic signal responds to each "hit" and tots up the . player's score. Charren argues that by encouraging children to buy an expensive toy to participate, such shows unfairly divide the young audience into "the haves and the have-nots...
...however, most kidvid fare seems less an alternative to dreary network programming than a reinforcement of it. "The good news," says Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, "is that children's video is the most likely place to find alternatives to toy-commercial video, which is what network children's TV has turned into. The bad news is that all this stuff on network TV is also in home-video stores, and the promotion budgets are enormous...