Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 6, 1995                   TAG: 9504060077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FCC TENTATIVELY APPROVES NEW CHILDREN'S TV RULES

Intended to produce more educational children's shows, the law has instead set off a long-running power struggle over what it means and how it should be enforced.

On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission, which is charged with carrying out the law, tentatively approved several new rules to give it more teeth. But the FCC left open the question of setting minimum allotments for educational children's TV.

Liberal activists and parent-teacher groups said the FCC's latest proposal doesn't go far enough. Broadcasters said no more regulation is needed.

``They seem to be taking the issue seriously, and that's important,'' said Kathryn Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education and a leading children's television activist. ``But what matters is what they actually do.''

Both sides now will resume their lobbying of the FCC, which plans to vote on the stiffer rules in the fall.

What the FCC proposes to do is define more narrowly what qualifies as educational or informational kids' television. The initial response of some local stations to the 1990 act was to label programs such as ``The Jetsons'' and ``G.I. Joe'' as educational.

That astonished even veteran activists like Peggy Charren, the longtime leader of Action for Children's Television.

``My feeling is that if the industry doesn't know what educating children is all about, they should be in the shoe business, not show business,'' Charren said.

The FCC also wants to require television stations to identify the shows they are calling educational, on and off the air. The idea is to make it easier for community groups to lobby their local stations.

But on the critical question of whether stations should be required to broadcast a minimum level of educational children's shows - somewhere between an hour a day and an hour a week - the five-member commission is split.

Commissioner James Quello said at the meeting that such a requirement would ``blow up in court and self-destruct'' because it violated the First Amendment. The government can't dictate program content, he said.

``You have cable, the Nickelodeon channel, the Learning Channel, VCRs, interactive computer programs and public TV,'' Quello said. ``Citizens have recourse. They don't need the government to control programs.''

But others say children's shows are a small price for television stations to pay in exchange for their use of the public airwaves.

Commissioner Rachelle Chong, who appears to hold the swing vote on the question of quotas for educational children's television, said broadcasters had a duty as ``public trustees'' to provide ``significant and substantial increases in the amount of children's educational television.''

For broadcasters, the problem is that educational shows are less popular and profitable than purely entertaining, toy-based programs.