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Breaking News
FCC Revises Children's TV Obligations
September 28, 2006
The FCC has adopted a Second Order on Reconsideration and Second Report and Order ("Second Order") revising children's television obligations for broadcasters and cable operators. As you may recall, the FCC adopted revised children's TV rules in 2004 that were ostensibly aimed at digital broadcast streams but also applied to analog broadcasters. See our "Memorandum to Clients," dated September 13,2004. Certain rules, such as those related to host-selling, promotions, and the display of Internet addresses during children's programming, also applied to cable networks. However, the rules did not go into effect because they were the subject of federal court litigation. In its Second Order, the FCC unanimously adopted a compromise proposal submitted by a coalition of television networks, program providers, cable companies, advertisers and public interest groups. The new children's TV rules will take effect in a few months.
By way of background, the rule changes adopted by the FCC in 200A extended the requirement to air three hours of "core" children's programming to broadcasters' primary digital stream and, on a proportionate basis, to additional digital streams offered over the air for free. In addition, the 2004 rules permitted broadcasters and cable operators to display website addresses as a "crawl" at the bottom of the screen during children's programming, but only if the website satisfied a four-part test confirming that it was primarily non-commercial in nature. The FCC also determined in 2004 that promotional announcements for non-educational programming would be counted for purposes of the hourly commercial limits applicable to both broadcasters and cable networks.
In its Second Order, the FCC: (1) left in place the requirement that broadcasters provide a minimum amount of "core" children's television programming per day on both analog and digital broadcast channels, while clarifying that certain repeat programs that air on separate digital streams within seven days of each other do not count as core programming; (2) revised the definition of "commercial matter" to exclude promotions for children's programming under most circumstances, a decision which maintains the status quo; (3) revised the "website rule" to clarify that the display of internet website addresses will count as "commercial matter" if they appear during program material or during promotional and other announcements typically not counted as commercial time (i.e., public service announcements, identifications, and emergency announcements), or if the Internet addresses are for websites that do not meet the four-part test and are not clearly separated from program material; (4) will permit advertisers to use television characters to sell merchandise (i.e., "host-selling") on portions of a website if they are sufficiently separated from the program itself; and (5) eliminated the cap on the number of preemptions during children's programming, reverting back to case-by-case determinations of whether broadcasters have excessively preempted such programming.
The revised children's TV rules will go into effect 60 days after the full text of the rules has been published in the Federal Register. In the meantime, we would be pleased to respond to any questions regarding this matter.