Ms. Kidvid Calls It Quits

By Richard Zoglin

Few people in any field have demonstrated the power of a single impassioned voice as well as Peggy Charren. As head of Action for Children's Television, the activist group she founded 23 years ago in the living room of her suburban Boston home, Charren has been a tireless fighter for better children's TV. Because of her efforts, commercials aimed at kids are less manipulative than they once were; the hosts of children's shows, for example, can no longer hawk products to gullible young viewers. Even when she failed to bring about change, her constant, nagging presence -- and a knack for the pithy quote -- kept network programmers mindful that their responsibility to children went beyond simply making a buck from them.

Last week Charren announced that ACT would disband at the end of the year. Her reason: the passage of the 1990 Children's Television Act, which sets advertising limits on children's programming and requires TV stations to air at least some fare that serves the educational needs of kids. "For more than 20 years, ACT has tried to get the public-interest laws that govern broadcasting to apply to children," said Charren. "With the passage of the 1990 Children's Television Act, this goal has been achieved. People who want better TV for kids now have Congress on their side."

Other organizations will carry on the kidvid cause, and Charren herself will not disappear. But the demise of ACT leaves a void and raises a question: For all Charren's efforts, has children's TV got any better? In some ways, as Charren readily admits, it is worse. In the 1970s, partly because of Charren's lobbying, the networks added a host of informational shows for children, from ABC's Afterschool Specials to CBS's newsmagazine for kids, 30 Minutes. During the Reagan years, however, government regulation eased, and most of those shows were canceled or scaled back. Though PBS and cable have added greatly to the diversity of programming for children, network and syndicated fare, which still accounts for the bulk of kids' TV viewing, is largely a ghetto of interchangeable cartoons.

Nor has the commercialization of children's TV abated. In the late '70s, ACT was one of the groups that pressed for an FTC inquiry into whether commercials directed at kids ought to be banned or restricted. But after extensive hearings, the FTC took no action, and commercials are still an inextricable part of the economics of children's television.

The '80s gave rise to an even more insidious phenomenon: cartoon shows based on popular toys. Charren sought to ban programs like G.I. Joe and My Little Pony as little more than program-length commercials. Most have since expired from low ratings, but a fresh wave may be on the way: several new shows in development feature snack-food characters like Chester Cheetah, who hawks Cheetos. "It's nauseating," says Charren. "Having turned all the toys into programs in the '80s, now they're going to turn all the logos into programs in the '90s."

The Children's Television Act will hardly solve all the problems. Its ceilings on kidvid advertising -- 12 minutes an hour on weekdays, 10 1/2 minutes on weekends -- are higher than what the networks currently run. Still, Charren sees the law as a breakthrough, mainly because it threatens stations with the loss of their license if they don't air some educational fare for kids. Says Charren: "That has much more power behind it than the noise of Peggy Charren and ACT."

That remains to be seen. The law is so vaguely worded that its impact depends almost entirely on how it is enforced. The key question is, What constitutes educational fare? (A documentary on rock music? A "pro-social" cartoon like Captain Planet?) Squire Rushnell, the former head of children's programming at ABC and now a producer of kids' shows, is pessimistic. "Until there is an impetus from the White House that would create a snowball effect with the FCC and on down, nothing is going to really happen."

Charren had an impact, not just because of the causes she championed but because of the ones she didn't. Despite her concern for children, she refused to ally herself with conservative groups fighting to purge TV of excessive sex and violence. "I believe that censorship is worse than any kind of junk on TV," she maintained. Her primary thrust was not for quality (that overused term) so much as for diversity: to give parents and kids more choice. Children's TV may still be a long way from her goal, but it is a lot closer than it would have been without her.

With reporting by William Tynan/New York