Impact By the end of the 1990’s, battles over televi-
sion content and media effects on children were be-
ing extended to the Internet and to video games, al-
though with different immediate results. In 1999,
Canada’s regulatory commission for radio and tele-
vision, the CRTC, announced that it would not regu-
late new media activities on the Internet (including
Web sites, video games, and online radio and televi-
sion programming) under Canada’s Broadcasting
Act. In 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Children’s
Internet Protection Act. The V-chip “solution” did
not have the hoped-for successes in either country.
Older children had little trouble teaching them-
selves how to override V-chip technology. Surveys in
both Canada and the United States revealed that
many parents either did not know that their televi-
sion sets had V-chips in them or did not know what
the devices were for. Other parents did not know
how to use the technology. Another survey showed
that fewer than 10 percent of Canadian households
with children in the home used their V-chip technol-
ogy, despite the fact that it had been in place for
more than a decade.
Further Reading
Gentile, Douglas A., ed.Media Violence and Children:
A Complete Guide for Parents and Professionals. West-
port, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Experts address the
broad range of negative effects that media vio-
lence has on children.
Greenfield, Patricia Marks.Mind and Media: The Ef-
fects of Television, Video Games, and Computers. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. A
well-balanced discussion about the range of ef-
fects that electronic media have on children.
Though published in 1984, it is far from out of
date.
Heins, Marjorie.Not in Front of the Children: “Inde-
cency,” Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Scholarly
discussion, with a strong legal perspective, of is-
sues related to censorship and youth.
Barbara Roos
See also Censorship; Children’s Television Act of
1990; Telecommunications Act of 1996; Television;
TV Parental Guidelines system; UPN television net-
work; WB television network.
Children’s Television Act
Identification Federal legislation designed to
improve television programming for children
Date Enacted October 18, 1990
The Children’s Television Act was an attempt by the U.S.
Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to
increase the educational value of television programming
provided children.
In 1990, Congress reviewed a study revealing that
children between the ages of two and six watched an
average of three hours of television per day, and the
by age eighteen, the average American child has
viewed 15,000 to 20,000 hours of television. An addi-
tional study of 750 ten- to sixteen-year-olds found
that two-thirds of the respondents felt that their
peers were influenced by television, and 60 percent
felt that it was negative. Based on these findings,
Congress determined that television potentially
could be beneficial to society by meeting the educa-
tional and emotional needs of the nation’s youth. To
ensure these needs were met, Congress enacted the
Children’s Television Act on October 18, 1990, with
the goal of increasing educational and informa-
tional core programming broadcast to children.
To aid the act’s implementation, in 1991 the Fed-
eral Communication Commission (FCC) defined
core programming as “programming that furthers
the positive development of children 16 years of age
and under in any respect, including the child’s intel-
lectual/cognitive or social/emotional needs,” and
created criteria for programs to qualify.
To retain their licenses, broadcasters had to air a
minimum of three hours of core programming
weekly between 7a.m.and 10p.m.; the program-
ming had to be at least thirty minutes and regularly
scheduled. In addition, stations had to log all aired
core programming, complete a publicly available
quarterly report listing their compliance, and sub-
mit in writing programs that met the criteria prior to
airing so that television guides and listings could
identify them.
Advertising was also monitored under the act.
Commercials were limited to 12 minutes per hour
on weekdays, and 9.5 minutes (increased to 10.5 in
1993) on weekends. Broadcasters were expected to
cease “host selling” (advertising with program char-
acters) and “product tie-ins” (advertising products
from the program) within core programming.174 Children’s Television Act The Nineties in America