Children’s Television Act of 1990

The Children’s Television Act of 1990 (CTA) was intended to promote broadcast television programming in the public interest and increase young viewers’ access to educational and informational content on television. U.S. President George H.W. Bush allowed the act to become a law without his signature in October 1990, saying he supported its goals but had objections on free speech grounds.

Although Americans had voiced concerns about the programs children were watching on television since at least the 1950s, little formal action had been taken to regulate the content or delivery of children’s programming. Even the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, while it spoke to a need for all-ages educational programming on television, only added one new viewing option through the Public Broadcasting Service. The CTA was predicated on the notion that television could emerge as a positive factor in the lives of young viewers but that market forces had not produced sufficient results in that regard.

The rules that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted in 1991 to implement the law directed broadcasters to provide educational and informational programming, which it defined as programming that “furthers the positive development of children 16 years of age and under in any respect, including the child’s intellectual/cognitive or social/emotional needs.” A television station’s failure to satisfy any of several key standards in the regulations might result in the denial of its application for FCC license renewal.

Since 1996 the FCC has generally treated three hours per week of educational programming as the benchmark for streamlined approval of a station’s license renewal. Such content, delivered to specifications, is designated as core programming. The FCC stipulates several features of core programming: it must appear between the hours of 6:00 am and 10:00 pm; it must represent regularly scheduled shows rather than special programs; each aired segment must be at least 30 minutes in length; and it must be marked on the screen as educational or informational.

In addition, the FCC restricts the role commercials may play during core programming. FCC rules require that commercials air for no longer than 12 minutes per hour of core programming on weekdays and no longer than 10.5 minutes of every hour on weekends. When core programming targets an audience of viewers aged 12 years or under, broadcasters are required to place interstitial material between core programming and commercial segments, such that viewers might better recognize the difference between actual program content and advertisements.

Finally, the FCC requires broadcast television stations to prepare, and make available to the public upon request, quarterly reports documenting satisfaction of the FCC standards. Such reports also require broadcasters to admit failures of compliance, including any overage in the ratio of commercial messages aired during core programming.

Some critics and studies have argued that increases in the quantity of educational programming did not necessarily correspond to improvements in educational quality. Furthermore, some have suggested that the variety of children’s programming on broadcast television may have decreased following passage of the CTA. This finding may owe to a trend in which television stations replaced local and regional programs with national shows. These syndicated programs, while often cheaper to air for broadcasters, did not necessarily offer more beneficial content to young viewers.

Through children’s programming, advertisers recognized a direct path to suggestible populations of viewers as prospective lifelong customers. While the CTA set limits on the portion of any core broadcast hour that could be devoted to commercials, advertisers continued to exploit television access to youth, and the CTA did nothing to monitor the appropriateness of products advertised or to challenge the manipulative approaches ads employed in addressing young audiences. An unexpected consequence of the CTA was that advertisers began to air shorter promotional spots during children’s programming, but in greater numbers.

In addition, critics have argued that outside core programming, standards in children’s television on average remained low after the passage of the CTA. Profit-minded television stations began to favor the selection of children’s programming that, whether directly or obliquely, lent itself to product tie-ins and cross-promotions, such as to motion pictures, toys, and fast-food establishments. The commercials aired with such programs were only slightly more obvious than the shows themselves as attempts at brand recognition and purchase promotion. Finally, by designating a minimum number of hours as core programming, the CTA remained silent about the remainder of content aired, including that intended for young audiences.

Since 1990 the FCC has put in place several modifications to the rules as they affect children’s educational and informational television programming. For example, by 1996 the FCC codified its definition of educational/informational programming. Three additional changes warrant special notice.

The first modification involved enforcement. The FCC called upon television stations to keep logs of the basis for their claim that items aired met the standard specified for core programming. In practice, however, for the first few years many stations failed to keep those logs and did so with relative impunity. By 1993 the FCC moved toward stricter monitoring of compliance.

The second modification addressed diversification in the television industry beyond the traditional broadcast networks. FCC restrictions on commercials aired during core programming became applicable to all digital television programming.

The third modification involved the pervasive presence of the Internet. In 2006 the FCC added restrictions to the use of core programming to display websites. As with the restrictions previously placed on core programming commercials, the rules regarding featured websites sought to shield young viewers from additional commercial appeals.

The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society.