Word: kidvid
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...kidvid crackdown has its troublesome aspects. For one thing, the rules apply only to broadcasting stations -- not to cable channels, which can continue to lure young viewers with all the cartoons they want. The creation of a new category of educational fare, moreover, may simply ghettoize such programming and turn kids off. The very notion of educational TV often seems to reflect narrow, schoolmarmish notions. Live-action shows are almost automatically preferred over cartoons, and some sweetly innocent shows, like Barney and Friends, seem to win approval largely because they shelter kids from the rude real world -- a strange notion...
...this is a children's story, and the good guys get the last word. Peggy Charren, the veteran kidvid activist, notes that educational shows rarely get high ratings because they must be geared toward specific age groups; that is why government monitoring must supplement the marketplace. "It's a bloody shame," she says, "that in a country as rich and achieving as this one, you had to drag the broadcasters kicking and screaming to serve children." Now, perhaps, the kicking may subside and the serving will start...
...Federal Communications Commission may have had enough. The agency has announced it will "seek comment on whether rules might be revised to serve the educational needs of children." But the FCC is already hinting displeasure with current standards for kidvid, noting "little change in available programming directed at children's needs" and insisting that "the primary goal of children's programming should be educational and informational, with entertainment as a secondary goal...
...MADE CARTOONS OUT OF THE JACKsons and Hulk Hogan. Why not try it in reverse, fleshing out a peerless kidvid cartoon of the '60s? Here's why. A few years back, Dave Thomas and Sally Kellerman starred as a live-action BORIS AND NATASHA, the spy-in-the-face nemeses of Jay Ward's immortal Rocky and Bullwinkle. Charles Martin Smith's film was never released, but it is now being aired on Showtime. Because the small screen has laxer standards for comedy (after all . . . Full House?), you may briefly indulge the strenuously facetious antics, the wisenheimer narration, the cameos...
...Children's Television Act will hardly solve all the problems. Its ceilings on kidvid advertising -- 12 minutes an hour on weekdays, 10 1/2 minutes on weekends -- are higher than what the networks currently run. Still, Charren sees the law as a breakthrough, mainly because it threatens stations with the loss of their license if they don't air some educational fare for kids. Says Charren: "That has much more power behind it than the noise of Peggy Charren...