The Children’s Television Act

An average child will have watched between 10,000 and 15,000 hours of television and more than 200,000 commercials by the time they have turned 18. What they watch and how they are influenced depends upon what is available to them. Television can treat children as ‘Little Consumers,’ or it can be used to have a positive impact. Television can be mindless entertainment, or educational. The problem is that there is little incentive for broadcast television to cater to children’s needs instead of those of an advertiser.

To address these issues, Congress instructed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to limit the amount of advertising during children’s programming and increase the amount of educational and informational television content broadcast over the air by enacting the Children’s Television Act (CTA) in 1990. Since that time, content on other media has exploded. Cable, satellite, and internet services providers are now the dominate sources of content. Given this change some question the CTA’s importance and whether it impinges on the 1st amendment rights of broadcasters.

Despite these concerns, the CTA is still an important piece of legislation because it informs broadcasters of their obligations as public fiduciaries of the nation’s valuable broadcast airwaves. But it is questionable whether one of the major benefits of the CTA has been met, that of increasing the amount and quality of educational programming on broadcast television. The FCC’s implementation may need some fine-tuning to address these issues while balancing the broadcaster’s and children’s needs.

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