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Clinton Gets Networks To Increase Educational Programs For Children

Los Angeles Times

Bowing to intense pressure from President Clinton, America’s top television executives agreed Monday to air three hours of educational children’s programming each week - a pact that children’s advocates said will bring sweeping changes to kids’ television but critics complained has too many loopholes.

Approval of the three-hour rule marked a major turnabout for the executives of the four major TV networks, who had opposed it for years on First Amendment grounds. It also amounted to an important election-year achievement for the president, who announced the pact at the outset of his second so-called “media summit.”

Clinton said the plan would send a powerful message to America’s parents: “You are not alone. We are all committed to working with you to see that educational programming for your children makes the grade.”

But Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole expressed doubts that the agreement will make any real difference. Saying Clinton had accepted more than $454,000 in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry, Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield, said Clinton’s participation “makes the entire agreement suspect.”

Children’s television advocates, meanwhile, lavished praise upon the president and hailed the agreement.

“This is an extraordinary gift to American families,” said Peggy Charren, who as founder of Action for Children’s Television is considered the grande dame of children’s television advocates.

The proposal is supposed to give teeth to the Children’s Television Act of 1990, which was intended to promote quality educational programming but had so many loopholes that, one 1992 study found, broadcasters were using cartoons to meet the requirements. One network, for example, claimed “The Jetsons” as educational, for its depiction of life in the future.

Charren and other advocates say those loopholes will now be closed. “They can’t get away with ‘The Jetsons’ anymore,” said a gleeful Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Media Education.