The license renewals of three television stations were challenged by a pair of well-known industry watchdogs which claimed that some of their core children’s educational programming wasn’t up to par.
The stations included Fox Television’s WDCA-TV Washington DC; ION Media’s WPXW-TV Manassas VA (also serving Washington DC); and Raycom Media’s WOIO-TV Lorain OH (serving Cleveland).
The Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, Inc. and the Center for Digital Democracy complained that the stations were passing off children’s entertainment programming as being educational and counting toward their weekly three hour program total.
The FCC explained, “The area of disagreement among the parties here relates to the most sensitive and subjective of the criteria, namely whether the programs include as a significant purpose the furtherance of children’s positive development in any way, including serving their cognitive/intellectual or social/emotional needs.”
The three station licensees produced affidavits from various educators and producers explaining how the programming in question fulfilled the requirement.
The FCC turned down the watchdogs.
It said it was reluctant to intervene in the programming decisions of licensees in the first place, and that in this case, it would not since the three stations had gone to pains to make sure the programming was qualified to count towards the three hour requirement.
That said, the FCC added, “Nevertheless stations should take cognizance of objections leveled against core children’s programming especially since the processing guideline of three hours a week of informational and educational programming is minimal when compared against a station’s many weekly broadcast hours. Core programming should be such that there can be no reasonable question raised as to whether a significant purpose of the broadcast is informational or educational, addressing the cognitive/intellectual or social/emotional needs of children. It is noteworthy that it appears that the objections by the petitioners were successful in precipitating a review by all of the stations of the programs at issue. Despite the licensees’ defense of their programming lineups, all of the station’s Children’s Programming Reports (Form 398) disclose that each core programming lineup was promptly modified to replace the programs that were the subject of the petitions.”
RBR+TVBR observation: Interesting case. The bottom line is clear – stations do indeed have a certain amount of leeway when it comes to providing their weekly three hours of educational programming.”
However, the FCC appealed to their better nature – a wise station will run something that does more than skirt the minimum standard – instead it will run three hours of programming which leaves no doubt whatsoever as to its applicability to the requirement.
