placed on children’s television programming. Policy devel-
opments in Canada were further complicated by the pres-
ence of the strong U.S. media market.
The constitutions of Canada and the United States
both guarantee freedom of expression. The Cana-
dian television system is more centralized and gov-
ernment-influenced than its U.S. counterpart. The
Canadian situation is also shaped by two factors not
present in the United States: the need to accommo-
date two official languages (French and English)
and the need to cope with the spillover of U.S. pro-
grams via air, cable, and satellite channels. Despite
these and other differences, very similar federal re-
strictions on the content of children’s programming
were imposed in both nations during the 1990’s.
Also, pro-censorship pressure groups proved effec-
tive in both countries. Citizen-activist pressure
groups included the influential Fraser Institute in
Canada and the Action for Children’s Television
(ACT) in the United States. ACT helped to build
wide public support for the Children’s Television
Act of 1990.
Regulations Over the years, films, comic books,
and even the lyrics of popular songs
have been targets of concern for the
public, pressure groups, and gov-
ernments in both Canada and the
United States. During the 1990’s,
television held center stage. In
1990, the U.S. Congress passed the
Children’s Television Act. Its goal
was to encourage more informa-
tional and educational program-
ming for children than the com-
mercial market had been able to
produce on its own. Henceforth,
television stations in the United
States would be required by the fed-
eral government to schedule educa-
tional/informational children’s
programming for a minimum num-
ber of hours per week in order for a
station’s license to be renewed by
the Federal Communications Com-
mission (FCC). The FCC also began
to limit the extent of commercial
time allowed in children’s program-
ming. It also prohibited having toys
that appear as characters within a
program to also appear in commercial messages
within the program. Finally, the hosts of children’s
television shows were henceforth prohibited from
appearing in such commercials.
Early in the decade, the Canadian Radio-Televi-
sion and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
began examining the issue of television violence.
This led to the 1993 publication of the Canadian As-
sociation of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics,
which prohibited “gratuitous violence” on television
and also forbade showing violence to be a good solu-
tion in children’s shows. The nongovernmental
CAB established a Canadian Broadcast Standards
Council (CBSC) as a form of industry self-regula-
tion, an action similar to efforts on the part of the
U.S. music industry, which self-policed by putting
parental advisory stickers on albums containing po-
tentially offensive content in order to avoid govern-
ment restrictions.V-Chip Technology In June, 1994, the V-chip was
introduced to the Canadian public as a solution to
censorship pressures. A Canadian invention, the
V-chip allows parents to block objectionable pro-172 Children’s television The Nineties in America
President Bill Clinton holds a V-chip at the Library of Congress on February 8, 1996.
The chip allows parents to block objectionable television content.(AP/Wide World
Photos)