When the Federal Communications Commission released a report last month saying Congress has the authority to keep programs with violent material from being televised during hours when children could view them, the stage immediately was set for yet another showdown between the broadcasting industry and Capitol Hill.

Although the subject of objectionable content is a valid concern, the FCC appears less attuned to the overall decline in the quality of programs geared toward children and teenagers on the broadcast networks.

Under FCC licensing guidelines, each of the major television networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox – is expected to air at least three hours of “educational and informational” programs for children weekly. To comply, since the late 1990s, stations generally have relied on a three-hour slate of Saturday morning cartoons. Many channels carried Saturday morning children’s programs well before that, but they were not required to do so.

Unlike PBS, the educational network, with its highly lauded mainstays such as “Sesame Street,” the broadcast stations have long relied on dollars and cents to dictate decisions about children’s programming. And, with the expansion of cable outlets such as Nickelodeon and The Disney Channel in the 1990s, the competition for advertising dollars has grown more intense. As a result, the broadcast networks have scaled back their children’s programming – which formerly ran as long as from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays – in favor of local and national newscasts. With a handful of exceptions, what remains are less imaginative programs than in past years and shows with vague educational value.

The current debate over the accessibility of violent material for children mirrors an equally contentious dispute more than 40 years ago. When then-FCC Commissioner Newton Minow branded television “a vast wasteland” in 1961, network executives scrambled to expand programming beyond westerns and cop shows.

But the most dramatic changes occurred after a Massachusetts mother named Peggy Charren created Action for Children’s Television. It pressured the networks to become more responsive to parents by balancing traditional children’s programming with more educational features on topics such as morality and real-world situations in children’s lives. The result was a slate of highly instructive and entertaining shows aired in the ensuing decades on each of the broadcast stations. Among them were programs such as “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” and “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” I’m from a generation that rose at dawn on Saturdays in the 1980s anticipating animated and live-action programs. Critics panned much of what aired as attempts to exploit young audiences for the benefit of toy manufacturers.

Although that was true for some of the programs, there also were many imaginative, Emmy-award winning shows with strong educational components. The programs, now ingrained in American popular culture, included the brief “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” “In the News” and “Schoolhouse Rock!” The broadcast networks also kept highly lucrative daytime programs such as “The Oprah Winfrey Show” off the air once a month to air serials such as “The ABC Afterschool Special” and the “CBS Schoolbreak Special” – dramatizing problems such as teenage pregnancy and alcoholism.

Scattered across the television universe are notable standouts such as the Nickelodeon animated series “Dora the Explorer,” its long-time child-oriented news broadcast hosted by Linda Ellerbee, and such other programs as the recent Disney series “The Proud Family,” and “In the Mix,” a weekly PBS documentary that provides fascinating insight into the lives of teenagers. But they’re exceptions.

Certainly, the networks still command wide audiences among children. Presenting worthwhile programs remains a responsibility the networks should carry out.

At the broadcast networks, though, children’s educational programming – except on PBS – generally has been cast aside. After their limited selection of cartoons, the time slots for more instructional fare shift so regularly that they’re easy to miss. An amendment to the landmark Children’s Television Act of 1990 enables the public to review licensing files at local stations to ensure their children’s programming is in accordance with FCC standards.

While proposed measures such as a wholesale return to a prime-time “family hour” merit review, true reform will be the result of an informed public engaging the networks and legislators on what constitutes educational programming.

In 2004, advocate Charren condemned FCC efforts that appeared to endorse censorship. “With television, as with most issues in our children’s lives, perhaps our most important role is to guide youngsters to make thoughtful choices of their own,” she wrote. Those choices will be much easier if there are more, not fewer, outlets for first-rate children’s programming.