Today, the Federal Communications Commission adopted an Order on the children’s educational rules for digital television. The FCC’s Order endorses a settlement between children’s media advocates and the broadcast and cable industry. Most importantly, the settlement and FCC action recognize the vital role that the media industry can play in serving the interests of children and their parents and ensures that digital TV broadcasters will air three hours of children's educational programming per channel on both analog and digital TV channels. In addition, the new rules provide safeguards for children concerning the advertising of websites including buffers between program characters and sales pitches.

The following statement can be attributed to Gloria Tristani, President of the Benton Foundation, former FCC commissioner and a participant in the settlement negotiations:

The Benton Foundation and the children’s community welcome today’s action by the FCC. This deal demonstrates what can be accomplished when the Commission, the media industry and children’s advocates come together to craft a workable definition of "in the public interest" for children.

This process should be a model for the FCC, the media industry and advocates to come together to define what “in the public interest” means for adults in the digital age as well. The FCC is required to promote diversity, localism and competition in broadcasting. With a February 2009 deadline for the switch to digital television technology, the FCC is long overdue in deciding how the increased capacity of digital television should be harnessed to better serve the civic, educational and cultural needs of our communities – and how they should disclose their valuable public service.

Television broadcasters need to know what will be expected of them as they devise their digital TV business plans and consumers need to know how they will benefit from the investment in costly digital TVs.

The transition to digital television offers a unique opportunity to improve television broadcasters’ service to the public by increasing the children’s educational programming that we see today. But we also have the opportunity to enhance the diversity of viewpoints at a time when minority media ownership levels are abysmal, promote civic participation through better election coverage, and expand local and community programming using the advances of multicasting.

Now that we have moved to make sure digital television serves the educational needs of children, it is time to do the same for the rest of the community.