Children's Programming on Broadcast TV Reduced While Cable Increases Time For Kids (May 27, 2003)

Children migrating from the broadcasting stations to cable, home of Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, ABC Family Channel, and others are causing the ratings of the broadcasters to erode as fewer shows for kids to watch without cable have become all but a reality in the world of television today.

With the broadcasters choosing to air three hours of educational kids programs, mostly on Saturday mornings, where they cannibalize each other in the ratings, and not choosing to program during the weekdays anymore, it is hard for the broadcasters to cross-promote programming aimed at the younger viewers if there's nothing for them to watch during the weekdays.

At one time, most of the programming hours aimed at the children were delivered via syndication with the independent stations usually programming 4-5 hours of children's programs a day in the morning and afternoon blocks. Nowadays, there's almost nothing from the syndicators on broadcast television anymore since that market has dried up with children switching to several full-time cable networks.

Nowadays, broadcast network television and what's left of the syndicators are providing most of the programming for children, but even with the government-mandated three-hour educational TV minimum, forcing many of the network affilliates to make room for kids programming whether they get ratings or not, most are not even promoting them on the broadcast outlets because, as I said, there's no other kind of programming in other days to promote them. You can't really promote Disney's One Saturday Morning block during General Hospital or NYPD Blue.

So, the broadcast networks's sister cable outlets take on the duty to promote the broadcast network's shows on Saturday mornings, where you can see Disney's ABC network crosspromoting the programs from The Disney Channel and ABC Family. ABC used to program seven hours a weekend for children's programs; now it's down to five.

Viacom's CBS and UPN networks, which cross promote each other, are also being plugged by Nickelodeon. UPN's weekday programming block, programmed by Disney, comes to an end this fall, but the network, still, must expand its two-hour Sunday kids block to three hours to meet the minimum requirement. Disney's two hour block may go back to syndication, and if they do, UPN may drop its kids programs and its affilliates may buy the Disney syndication block for its stations.

CBS once had a weekday children's block, Captain Kangaroo, until 1984. It used to program seven hours of kids programs a weekend; now it only programs three.

Fox, like UPN, also had a weekday kids block, in fact, three hours of it everyday, until it was dropped two years ago due to declining ratings.

The WB Network will be the only one of the three recent netlets remaining that programs two hours of children's programs on weekdays, as well as four hours on Saturday mornings, getting cross-promoted on the AOL Time-Warner cable networks such as Cartoon Network and Boomerang.

NBC is the hardest network to cross-promote their Disney Kids programming block on Saturday mornings. It can buy time on Animal Planet or cross-promote it from several Discovery Channel networks, but it has no cable network, like the four other network TV owners who do, to cross promote their kids programs for their broadcast network. NBC used to have five hours devoted to kids programs through 1992, a year after The Smurfs ended their popular run.

But now, reports from AP and Reuters are suggesting that media mergers are to blame for the sharp reduction of children's programs, as well as declining ratings.

Children Now, a child research and advocacy group based in Oakland, California, examined consolidation among television stations in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city and media market.

The study examined one week of the seven primary commercial broadcast stations in 1998 and 2003. Overall, it found a 47 percent decrease in children's shows, with the loss of three hours of TV on Saturday, four hours on Sunday and 90 minutes on weekdays. The biggest drop in kids' programming occurred at "duopolies" - two stations in the same market owned by one company, Children Now said.

One example: in Los Angeles, KCOP, the UPN affilliate which was once owned by Chris-Craft Industries, aired some 14 shows while Fox's KTTV aired 21 shows for kids back in 1998. Now, a year after Fox acquired the Chris Craft stations, many of which are UPN affilliates, KCOP is airing only four different children's shows (mostly the same show airing six days a week, 12 hours a week), and KTTV is airing seven or eight shows from Fox programming on Saturday mornings, plus a few installments of Magic School Bus offered to Fox stations, about six hours a week.

It's odd that Viacom's UPN stations are carried on rival News Corp.'s Fox stations in Los Angeles and New York.

Another example cited by Reuters: in the same period, the amount of kids' programs on local station KCAL fell by 89 percent from 26 hours a week to three hours per week, while sister station KCBS maintained its lineup of three hours per week in both years.

Many children's series on stations owned by large media corporations, such as Disney and Viacom, were found by researchers to be repeats of shows that also aired on jointly owned cable channels. Such repeats have almost quadrupled since 1998, the study said.

Children Now said its research should be considered as the Federal Communications Commission is poised to overhaul media ownership restrictions. The study, while confined to only Los Angeles, could have broader implications for U.S. media markets heading toward a crucial June 2 vote by the Federal Communications Commission on whether to relax rules dealing with TV ownership.

"We think our study is the canary in the coal mine, indicating that relaxing these rules can have a serious impact on availability and diversity in children's programming," said Patti Miller, director of Children Now's Children & the Media program.

"I definitely think there is a connection," Miller said Tuesday. "We think the FCC needs to consider the needs of kids before changing media ownership rules on June 2."

While educational TV shows may be aimed at children, children's shows are not necessairily educational. What does constitute educational content that qualifies as meeting the minimum requirement?

I don't think most of the kids programs Fox stations are airing come close enough to meeting the educational requirement. What is educational about such forgettable action shows a Fighting Foodons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kirby, Ultimate Muscle, or Pirate Islands? Fox just doesn't get it.

Potential causes of the drop were not part of the study, said lead researcher Christy Glaubke. "So we can't speak from an empirical perspective," she said. "But we can speculate about the reasons. Children's shows can be expensive to produce, and good kids' shows are very expensive, so it's fair to assume it's for financial reasons."

Miller noted that commercial broadcasters, unlike their counterparts in the cable industry, are required to act in the public interest in return for free use of the airwaves.

"The study's lessons are clear; large media conglomerates are not acting in best interests of children," said Patti Miller, director of Children & the Media for Children Now. Miller said the FCC should allow more time before their June 2 vote to study how one company's ownership of two channels in one market, so-called "duopoly," affects children's programming before proceeding.

Meanwhile, the only broadcast TV outlet that programs at least three hours of educational TV shows a week is your local public-supported PBS station, where they can air as many as 11 hours a day on weekdays and 12 hours a weekend, for a total of some 67 hours a week of educational programming aimed to children.