School Of Hard Knocks

WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT IF GROWNUPS SAID WATCHing cartoons on TV was as good as going to school? Turns out, some have. In order to meet the standards imposed by the Children's Television Act of 1990, a number of local stations around the country are claiming that many Saturday-morning cartoon and kiddy shows, including The Jetsons, G.I. Joe, Super Mario Brothers and Leave It to Beaver, are "educational" in nature. In a report prepared by the Center for Media Education in Takoma Park, Maryland, consumer groups charge that these stations are skirting the law's intent to upgrade children's TV programming by lumping all programs into vague categories such as "programs specifically designed for children." As it is, says the report, 60% of the scarce news shows for children that do appear are relegated to time slots between 5:30 and 7 a.m.

The law was intended to force educational substance into a Saturday-morning lineup traditionally filled with goofy animation programs. But an examination of license-renewal applications revealed that many stations summarized plots of entertainment shows in ways that made them sound educational. Take one station's description of G.I. Joe: "The Joes fight against an evil that has the capabilities of mass destruction of society." Says Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children's Television, who lobbied for the law: "The response of the broadcast industry to its new mandate to serve children is horrifying once you stop laughing. If their lawyers weren't drunk, they must be sick." Not necessarily. Regulators in the Reagan Administration once tried to cut funds for school lunch programs by classifying catsup as a vegetable.