Regulations on children's television programming in the United States

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States of America, established by the Communications Act of 1934, is in place in order to regulate interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. Children's programming has not been exempt from FCC regulation and has been subject to multiple rules and regulations, particularly over the last few decades.

Children's Educational Television

Safe Harbor Hours

The term "safe harbor" refers to the hours during which broadcasters may transmit material deemed indecent for children. This "safe harbor", enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, extends—legally—from 10 PM to 6 AM and was established by the US Supreme Court case FCC v. Pacifica. This "safe harbor" is based on evidence that children 17 years of age and under are less likely to be in the audience during these hours. With respect to violent program content, the research suggests that younger children are most at risk, possibly requiring a different conclusion as to the ages of children to be protected and the appropriate "safe harbor" hours.

Children's Television Act of 1990

In 1990 Congress enacted the Children's Television Act (CTA) in order to increase the amount of informational and educational programming available for children on television. The FCC has adopted rules in order to carry out this mandate. Television stations, under FCC rule, must:

• Provide parents and consumers with information about core programs being aired
• Define the type of programs that qualify as core programs
• Air at least three hours per week of core programs

Core Programming

Core programs are designed to serve the educational and informational needs of children (ages 16 and under). Core programming must be a regularly scheduled weekly program that is at least thirty minutes in length and aired between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.

Commercial Time Limits

Children 12 years old and younger are more susceptible to the power of television advertisements than adults. Therefore the FCC enforces time limits (10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekends) on commercials for television shows aimed at this audience.

Program Length Commercials

A program associated with a product in which commercials for that product are aired. It also covers programs in which a product or service is advertised within the body of the program and not separated from program content as children's commercials are required to be. The FCC fears that children will not be able to perceive the difference between the programming and the commercial, and thus treat the entire program as a commercial.

Obtaining Children's Programming Information

One of the main goals of the FCC's rules is to provide more information about educational programming to parents and other members of the public. The FCC forces the "E/I" (Educational/Informational) icon to be used to identify core educational programs.Television stations must provide the information identifying these programs to publishers of television guides and television listings. These rules also require television stations to file quarterly reports with the FCC (which are to be made available to the public) regarding their educational programming.

1996 Mandate

Federal Communications Commission unanimously passed a regulation that requires television stations to show three hours of children's educational programming each week. Rather than an inflexible three-hour requirement, the nations television stations be required either to broadcast three hours' worth of regularly scheduled half-hour educational shows for children weekly, or to satisfy the F.C.C. that they offer enough other programs or public-service activities to fulfill their legal mandate. The mandate originally from the Children's Television Act of 1990, which required stations to better serve educational or informational needs of children but set no hourly quota. The law left it to the FCC to determine compliance. Many stations either counted dubious shows, like The Jetsons, as educational, or added some educational shows but scheduled them at 5:30 or 6 A.M. The new rule tightens the definition of educational programming, requiring that it be specifically designed to serve an educational purpose.

Fines

The FCC takes it’s rules and regulations very seriously; and rules and regulations are only as good as the enforcement that comes with them. If rules and regulations are not properly enforced, then they are practically void because there is no punishment or threat associated with breaking the rules and regulations set in place by the authorities. The FCC must monitor children’s programming and create regulations that must be followed specifically for children’s programming, with correlating punishment. The most common way to punish a station for breaking a rule or regulation set in place by the FCC is fines. The fines charged against the stations vary based upon which regulation they went against and how badly they broke the rule. On average, fines range from $25,000-$70,000 per station

One of the largest fines was for $70,000 given for a program that was "program length". This occured when a commercial for a memorabilia website shown during a "Yu-Gi-Oh " television program contained a "very brief" reference to Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards . In so doing, the station is considered to have exceeded the commercial limits by the entire length of the program less the number of commercial minutes allowed.

The FCC found a Pokemon program to be a program length commercial where a Pokemon game card with the letters "MON" was displayed for one second in a Nintendo GameBoy commercial during the show. In addition to these violations, other cited violations included failing to provide program guide publishers with information regarding the target child audience of core programs; failing to update the public file regarding compliance; and failing to publicize the existence and location of the station's children's television programming reports.

In 2007, the FCC fined a record of $24 million against the spanish-language television company Univision.

In 2004, Disney and Viacom were fined with $1.5 million for violating the amount of commercials that kids were exposed to. Viacom had to pay $1 million for airing their commercials excessively, while Disney was left to pay $500,000 since their Disney commercials aired on the ABC Family Channel.

Rules

Multicasting Rule

The order retains the revised educational and informational programming processing guideline the Commission adopted in 2004 for DTV multicasting, with a clarification regarding the limit on the repeat of core programs that applies to DTV channels (this limit on repeats does not apply to analog channels). The new order clarifies that a repeat for these purposes is an episode that has already aired on any digital stream within the previous seven days. Under the clarified rule, you will, therefore, be able to use different episodes of the same program to satisfy your core programming obligations without any time restrictions, and you will also be able to use the same episodes that aired in previous weeks on another stream to do so.

Preemption Rule

To qualify as core programming, children's programming must be "regularly scheduled," which means that the program must be scheduled to air at least once per week and must air on a regular basis.

Website Rule

In the 2004 order, the FCC for the first time restricted the display of website addresses during children's programming, and applied those rules to both analog and digital programming. It determined that an Internet website address could be displayed during programming aimed at children aged 12 and under only if the following four criteria are satisfied: (1) the website offers a substantial amount of bona fide program-related or other noncommercial content; (2) the website is not primarily intended for commercial purposes; (3) the website's pages are clearly labeled to distinguish the noncommercial from the commercial sections; and (4) the website page to which viewers are directed is not used for commercial purposes. 

Host Selling Rule

The Commission has long prohibited the use of program characters or show hosts to sell products in commercials aired during or adjacent to children's programs in which they appear.

Promotions Rule: Definition of "Commercial Matter."

The 2004 order expanded the definition of "commercial matter," for purposes of calculating compliance with the commercial limits for children's programs, to include all program promotions other than for children's educational or informational programs. That expansion covered both analog and digital channels, and its effective date was also postponed. The new order changes the rule and provides that (1) promotions for educational and informational programming on any channel and (2) promotions for any children's or other age-appropriate programming appearing on the same channel (whether or not informational or educational) will not be considered commercial matter.