EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING GETS FCC BOOST.

Byline: Lawrie Mifflin The New York Times

While the Federal Communications Commission is busy writing a new rule this week to require television stations to broadcast three hours a week of educational programs for children, momentum is gathering to help broadcasters comply.

Of course, ``help'' is not the verb most broadcasters and network executives would choose to label this movement. ``Pressure'' would be their choice.

Several media-research organizations completed studies this month showing the benefits to children of educational television and the demand for it from parents, as well as citing scholars' arguments for ratings codes to identify not only violent or sexually explicit programs parents might want to avoid but also educational or informational programs parents might want to embrace.

And President Clinton invited network executives to a White House conference next month on improving children's television.

On Monday at a meeting in Washington, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, who is best known as an expert in politics and television, announced that the Annenberg Public Policy Center had created an advisory panel to ``assess the quality of programs submitted to the FCC by stations seeking license renewal.''

The nine-member panel, called the Advisory Council on Excellence in Children's Television, includes educators James Comer and Charles Ogletree, as well as author Jonathan Kozol and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. All have agreed to serve for three years.

``I'm delighted there'll be private-sector groups evaluating and publicizing the efforts of children's television producers,'' commissioner Susan Ness of the FCC, who spoke at the Annenberg conference, said in a telephone interview afterward.

``Government shouldn't be doing that. This will be a wonderful tool a community can use to rally in support of, or rally to correct, the choices their local broadcasters are making.''

If the Annenberg panel succeeds, advocates say, its approval could become something akin to the ``Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.'' But some fear it could also become something akin to academic censorship.

``It's not too different from the old days when the Catholic Legion of Decency rated movies, is it?'' said Rick Siggelkow, co-producer, with Britt Allcroft, of the PBS show ``Shining Time Station'' and now vice president of the children's division of BBC Worldwide Americas.

Siggelkow said that the panel's value would lie in its independence, but that he also thought it should include representatives of the industry.

``These people have sterling credentials,'' he said. ``But what's glaringly absent is any children's television producers, the people who have to raise the money, come up with the concepts and actually make the shows. Certainly, Ken Burns is a wonderful producer and knows what producers have to go through, but his programs are very far removed from the children's arena.''

Many broadcasters argue that the advocates for more educational programming for children do not understand how difficult and expensive it is to do. They also complain that children don't watch educational programs. If a program draws paltry ratings, and therefore low advertising fees, they argue, it is a liability to them and of little service to the public.

At the Annenberg conference Monday, Victoria Rideout, director of the Children and the Media division of the California-based advocacy group called Children Now, led a panel discussion in which advertisers talked about this quandary.

She said studies released by the Annenberg Center on Monday showed that the higher-quality children's programs were usually scheduled in the least-watched time periods, creating a sort of Catch-22.

``How can we get networks and advertisers to give the high-quality programs a fighting chance?'' she said by telephone from Washington.

``On the panel I led, some advertising folks talked about forming a collaborative effort, where major advertisers and producers together would help produce some kids' programming, then take it to networks with some advertising support already there.''

Federal law requires television stations, as a condition for license renewal, to broadcast some educational and informational programs for children. The law, the Children's Television Act of 1990, does not specify how much, but empowers the FCC to decide that.

Many broadcasters object to a weekly three-hour minimum as a government intrusion on their First Amendment right to broadcast as they see fit, according to their own community's viewing wishes.

Other broadcasters, particularly those who believe their stations already serve children well, argue that it is more practical - and perhaps even more First Amendment-friendly - to know in advance what's expected at license-renewal time, rather than to have vague guidelines subject to interpretation by whatever five FCC commissioners happen to be in place at renewal time.

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Photo

Photo: Ken Burns

On panel assessing children's television