GAO Says FCC Could Improve Enforcement of Kids’ TV Rules
The FCC should expand its oversight and enforcement of some children’s TV rules to cover multichannel video programming distributors, the GAO recommended in a report on the agency’s implementation of the Children’s TV Act. Broadcasters self-report compliance with the rules, mainly by disclosing how many and what sort of ads run during kids’ programming. Cable and DBS operators aren’t required to self-report in the same way, resulting in far more fines against broadcasters than MVPDs “even though they televise much more children’s programming than broadcasters,” last week’s report said.
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The GAO also recommended the commission work with industry stakeholders on guidelines for what constitutes children’s programming, an area it’s avoided in the past for First Amendment reasons. The “FCC has effectively worked with industry stakeholders in the past to develop voluntary guidelines in other contentious areas, such as the voluntary television ratings system,” the report said. “Without such standards, moreover, broadcasters will remain vulnerable to question of the extent to which core children’s programming is indeed educational and informational."
Some children’s media advocates praised the report and its calls to expand commission oversight of pay-TV children’s programming. “One of the great issues we've had with kids’ TV at the commission is the discrepancies between broadcast and cable,” said Jeff McIntyre, director of national policy for Children Now. Advocates such as that group need more information about children’s TV programming for their advocacy to be effective, he said. “Without it we won’t have the information to take action or to know to not have to take any action."
The FCC has 60 days to review the GAO report and will respond to the final report, a Media Bureau spokeswoman told us. The agency is already addressing some of the issues raised by the report, bureau Chief Bill Lake wrote the GAO in responding to its draft report. “The Commission has now reinstated its audit program, designed to oversee cable operators’ and satellite providers’ compliance with advertising rules,” the letter said. The bureau will forward the GAO’s recommendations on programming guidelines to the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee, Lake said. Responding to the GAO’s recommendation that the commission improve its outreach to parents, Lake said his agency is revamping its website. “As part of this effort, the Commission will reassess the parent’s [sic] page and its ability to attract and convey helpful information to parents,” he said.
The report also said there are far more kids’ TV shows broadcast than in the past, largely due to the growth of multicast networks. That claim is artificial, said Dale Kunkel, a University of Arizona professor of communication. “This is equivalent to saying that Americans are exercising more because there are more Americans now than in the past, even though everyone is actually spending less time exercising,” he said. Multicast networks have far fewer viewers than stations’ main programming streams, he said. Critics have complained that there is less programming on the most-watched programming streams, and the report doesn’t track children’s programming there, Kunkel said.
Programming standards wouldn’t be needed if the FCC were to enforce its rules more effectively, Kunkel said. “It’s the FCC’s job to make these judgments and Congress has adopted a law that empowers them to do that, yet the FCC refuses to act.” He pointed to a longstanding petition to deny News Corp.’s WDCA-TV Washington, D.C.’s license on charges that it broke children’s programming rules.