Little Viewers, Big Squabble

[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Paige Albiniak]
Kids have become a key constituency in media policy in Washington. Advertising to kids is trickier than ever. Most urgently, the FCC’s new kids-TV rules are coming online Jan. 1. Media companies say the new regulations threaten the fundamentals of an already challenging business. If the courts don't force the FCC to stay the rules, media companies will have to drastically change the way they market, advertise and promote during kids shows. Washington’s involvement in all things kids is enough to make programmers want to back off completely. Developing and producing educational shows is expensive and time-consuming. Programmers have to keep ads during kids shows to 10½ minutes on weekends and 12 minutes on weekdays, according to the Children’s Television Act of 1990. That already limits programmers’ revenue, but the new rules would force them to count network promotions toward those limits as well, giving them even less time to sell. That will drive up the cost of each commercial, while driving down total revenue, hurting both advertisers and producers, they say. The Internet is a new arena for activists. According to such groups as the Children’s Media Policy Coalition (CMPC), directing kids from TV shows to branded Web sites is a version of “host-selling”: when a popular character hawks certain products. For example, The Disney Channel would not be allowed to mention or display disney.go.com during a show if there were direct links anywhere on the site allowing kids to buy Disney-related merchandise. “We’re fighting here about the relationship between what’s on television and what’s on the Internet,” says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president/CEO of public-interest law firm Media Access Project, “and that’s new and important for everyone.”
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