|
|
Article: Unintended Consequences.(Children's Television Act has unintended side effects)
- Article from:
- The Humanist
- Article date:
- November 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 American Humanist Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
If you asked Peggy Charren, the Ralph Nader of children's television, why in 1992 she decided to disband Action for Children's Television (ACT), the influential advocacy group she founded some twenty-three years earlier, she would probably sum it up in four words: the Children's Television Act.
Perhaps never before in the history of the medium had a law held more potential for positive change. Sure, the limits it set on advertising (twelve minutes an hour weekdays, ten and a half minutes on weekends) often exceeded what the networks had been running, but at least they established boundaries. And while the Children's Television Act was largely toothless from its ...