When Congress passed the Children’s Television Act in initial form in 1990, it had a noble goal: to protect children from a diet of pure cartoon commercialism and ensure that broadcasters, as trustees of the public airwaves, offered meaningful educational programming for young audiences. The law’s intent was clear — cap the number of minutes broadcasters could devote to advertising during kids’ shows, and compel stations to air a modest but consistent amount of educational and informational programming each week. In 1996, the FCC codified this into the rule that has governed "KidVid" obligations ever since: each full-power television station must air at least three hours per week of "core" educational/informational content. To qualify, a show has to be at least 30 minutes long, regularly scheduled, and clearly identified with an on-screen "E/I" bug familiar to industry watchers. Stations also file reports with the FCC to demonstrate compliance, reviewed at license renewal time. At face value, this sounded like a straightforward public-interest bargain: in exchange for free scarce spectrum, broadcasters would commit to a sliver of their schedule for children’s educational needs. But as with many regulatory mandates, the reality has played out in ways Congress probably never envisioned. Saturday Mornings: From Cartoons to Compliance For decades, network-controlled Saturday mornings were synonymous with kids’ TV. Generations grew up on Looney Tunes cartoons, Scooby-Doo, and toy-driven franchises that doubled as advertising for breakfast cereal and plastic action figures. By the 1980s, critics said children’s television had been hijacked by marketers, setting the stage for regulatory action. But the advent of the 1990 Children’s Television Act coincided with a much bigger structural shift: the migration of children’s programming to cable. Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel siphoned young audiences away from the broadcast dial. Networks quickly realized that producing their own children’s shows was a losing business proposition. Instead, they turned to outsourcing. By the 2000s, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and The CW had all abandoned in-house kids’ programming and instead struck deals with syndicators who specialized in producing FCC-compliant E/I "blocks." The most important of these players was Litton Entertainment, which by the early 2010s had secured contracts with nearly every major broadcast network. |
