TELEVISION : Fear Is a Great Motivator : With government pressure on, stations scramble to come up with educational shows that both kids and advertisers will buy

The hottest trend in children’s television for next season is fear.

Facing intense pressure from the government and public-interest groups to clean up their act, the nation’s TV stations are scheduling a flood of educational shows for kids this fall in a desperate attempt to stave off tougher regulation and preserve their licenses.

“Broadcasters beware: A new era has begun,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) warned last March during hearings convened by the House telecommunications subcommittee he chairs. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, he said, “insist upon higher standards.”

Industry executives have been advised that if programming for young people does not improve--specifically with regard to educational merit--the government may toughen existing rules, impose new fees and suspend the privilege of broadcasting. The FCC has already fined several outlets and held up the license renewal of others.

“Our stations are quite alarmed that their licenses may be in jeopardy,” acknowledges Margaret Loesch, president of the Fox Children’s Network, which distributes weekday and Saturday-morning kids’ fare to affiliates across the country. “Everyone is reacting very quickly to try and solve the problem.”

Indeed, during the past two months, all four networks and most major syndicators have added or renewed more than a dozen “FCC-friendly” programs, as the category is referred to within the TV industry. The bumper crop includes shows that try to teach kids basic math, physics, history, biology, geography, current events and pro-social behavior. As much as 20% of Saturday morning children’s programming will be devoted to programs that meet the FCC’s “educational and informational” guidelines, a genre that barely existed last February.

“A whole new market has been created,” says John Claster, whose Claster Television has quickly put together “Kids of Courage,” an inspirational series profiling children who have displayed acts of heroism or overcome great challenges. “We probably would not have offered this show if not for recent events in Washington.”

Within weeks of Markey’s pronouncement, CBS had plucked the science series “Beakman’s World” out of syndication for its Saturday-morning lineup, Disney contracted with a public-TV station in Seattle to produce and syndicate “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” Viacom arranged to syndicate the Nickelodeon cable channel’s news program “Nick News” and the National Geographic Society announced it was moving into children’s TV with a weekly series called “What in the World?”

This sequence of events was triggered early this year when the FCC and key members of Congress expressed their extreme displeasure with the way some broadcasters were responding to the Children’s Television Act, a 1990 law requiring stations to air an unspecified amount of programming that informs and educates young people. Episodes of “The Jetsons,” “Leave It to Beaver” and “Superboy” don’t count, an unamused FCC declared after several broadcasters submitted such shows as evidence of their compliance.

In March, on the eve of hearings by Markey’s telecommunications subcommittee, Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children’s Television and one of the major forces behind the Children’s Television Act, met with First Lady Hillary Clinton and won the Administration’s tacit support for stronger enforcement of the law.

“Broadcasters have proved over and over,” Charren told the subcommittee, “that without a slap on the hand from regulators, station executives were willing to consider children only as a market and their programs only as glue to stick to the screen commercials for fast food and costly toys.”

Some station executives blamed the imprecise language of the legislation for the slow response. The law simply defines educational and informational shows as those that “further the positive developement of the child in any respect, including the child’s cognitive/intellectual or emotional/social needs.”

The task shouldn’t be that difficult, quipped Charren: “If the broadcasters cannot figure out what education is, they should probably be in the shoe business.”

After 12 years of aggressive deregulation under Republican presidents, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

“Has the change in political climate been a factor in our stepped-up enforcement?” acting FCC Chairman James Quello asked in a telephone interview. “Of course it has. Members of Congress, the Democratic Party and the public are sending a very clear message that TV broadcasters and producers have to do more for children.

“If I were a broadcaster,” continued Quello, a Democrat and former TV station manager, “to be on the safe side I’d have shows that were specifically meant to be educational.”

Exactly what that means is still open to debate, but the agency says it definitely excludes “G.I. Joe,” “The Flintstones,” “Duck Tales,” “Tiny Toon Adventures” and “Hard Copy,” among others cited by stations in program reports to the FCC.

“It reflects badly on everyone when a station does something stupid like classify ‘The Jetsons’ as educational,” says Tom Capra, general manager of KTTV-TV Channel 11. “Now all of us are suddenly looking for ‘informational and educational’ kids’ shows and we’re inundated by syndicators offering such programs. Some are interesting, some are weird, and a lot are of fairly poor quality.”

Another local station manager goes even further, dismissing most “FCC qualifier” shows as “a lot of crap that I would never want to schedule.” But the dilemma for many broadcasters is that they now feel coerced into putting such shows on the air--with no assurances that advertisers feel similarly motivated to support them or that children will want to watch them.

“In 1993, you’ve got to do something more than have Mr. Wizard walk out and say, ‘Boys and girls, today we’re going to learn about rain,’ ” says Barry Thurston, president of Columbia Pictures Television Distribution, which, with Universal Belo Productions, is in its second year of producing “Beakman’s World,” a zany and fast-moving science show for pre-teens. Youngsters are used to fast-paced flash and glitz, he points out, which cost lots of money-- more than $250,000 per episode in “Beakman’s” case. “Kids have the zapper in their hands and otherwise will go immediately to something they regard as more entertaining.”

“Beakman’s World” is often cited as a model for the sort of programming the FCC envisions. Praised by educators, it is not only in syndication (airing locally at 7:30 a.m. Saturdays on KTLA-TV Channel 5) but also is shown during prime time on cable’s Learning Channel, and a children’s study guide has been developed for the series by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“ ‘Beakman’s World’ is a good show but it’s an exception to the rule,” says Kathryn Montgomery, a former UCLA professor who now co-chairs the Center for Media Education, a Washington-based public-interest group that has been critical of broadcaster compliance with the Children’s Television Act. “As a society, our willingness to provide programs that combine education and entertainment reflects how much we value our young people. Yes, it can be expensive to create such shows, but the industry also is making a lot of money off kids.”

According to trade publication estimates, children’s TV advertising is a $471-million-a-year business that continues to garner double-digit rate increases in a recessionary economy. On average, independent stations earn about 10% of their total ad revenues from kids’ TV.

In candid moments, many broadcasters agree that providing better programming for children is a small price to pay for their free use of the public airwaves.

“As a liberal Democrat, I’m glad there is a certain amount of legislation (on this issue),” says Rick Feldman, general manager of KCOP-TV Channel 13. “You have to have a conscience.” The pervasive nature of broadcasting, he adds, dictates that kids deserve special treatment.

“We can do a lot more for kids on TV than almost any other media and I think we should,” concurs Greg Nathanson, general manager of KTLA-TV Channel 5. “We do have an obligation (to children), whether the FCC tells us or not.”

KTLA, an independent owned by Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting, is adding the parent company’s health and fitness series “Energy Express” this fall to a lineup that already includes “Real News for Kids,” an informational magazine produced by CNN and Turner Broadcasting.

The networks are following suit. Jennie Trias, head of children’s programming for ABC, believes several of her network’s Saturday morning shows next fall will fulfill FCC requirements. In addition to two weekly specials, the network will air “Cro,” an animated series about a Cro-Magnon boy and a female scientist who are taught survival skills by smart woolly mammoths. Based on David Macauley’s best-selling “The Way Things Work,” “Cro” is from Film Roman and Children’s Television Workshop, the company that makes “Sesame Street.” Additionally, ABC will air “CityKids,” combining a group of teens with new Muppet characters, and is developing a news series for children.

CBS is adding the aforementioned “Beakman’s World” and NBC has renewed “Name Your Adventure,” a year-old Saturday-morning series from Big Daddy Productions. Host Mario Lopez helps teens from throughout the country fulfill fantasies ranging from whitewater rafting to spending a day with a U.S. Senator.

“It’s kind of funny that the other networks are now taking steps to bring shows like ours into their schedules,” says “Name Your Adventure” executive producer Kerri Friedland. “It took 18 months for us to get picked up (in 1992).”

At Fox, Loesch recently sent a memo to affiliates assuring them that educational material would be added next season in the guise of an animated version of the PBS geography series, “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” produced by DIC Enterprises.

Yet Loesch questions the premise that commercial TV must help cure society’s ills, including its beleaguered classrooms. “We are not teachers or educators; we’re in the entertainment business,” she argues--and at some point the effort to be educational interferes with the need to be entertaining.

Loesch’s pragmatic view, shared by many of her colleagues, is that children of the ‘90s are too fickle to sit through shows that don’t engage them. In a majority of homes, they can switch instantly to videocassettes or cable, neither of which is subject to programming requirements of the Children’s Television Act.

“You must remain competitive and entertaining,” Loesch says. “If kids don’t watch, then you’ve defeated your purpose.”

She and others worry that the federal mandate to produce educational programming will run head-on into advertiser and viewer apathy.

“If a show doesn’t get the numbers, it will fall by the wayside,” predicts Phil Roman, president of Film Roman, a Hollywood animation studio. “We did a show for Fox a few years ago that had high educational and moral content. But ‘Zazoo U’ didn’t get big enough ratings and lasted only one season.”

Other FCC-friendly series that have fallen by the wayside since 1990 include Goodman Entertainment’s “KTV” and “Wide World of Kids” and Group W’s “Way Cool.”

“I really hope that (advertisers) will support these efforts so that higher quality programs can get on the air,” says syndicator Claster. “In the meantime, I think stations will be willing to sacrifice time periods, but not ratings”--meaning that if educational fare cannot build an audience, it will be exiled to the early-morning ghetto, where fewer children will be able to benefit from it.

“While the networks and stations can put this material on, they are going to have difficulty airing such programming without advertiser support,” agrees Jennie Trias, the ABC children’s programming chief. “It’s not going to get done if sponsors opt out, but I honestly think there are a number of companies who are not going to shirk this responsibility.”

A senior executive for one of Hollywood’s biggest producers of children’s fare is less sanguine, blaming “a pervasive fear of risk-taking among advertisers” for the likely lack of profitability of many new series. The programmer, who asked not to be named, nevertheless believes a majority of such shows may remain on the air for the foreseeable future because broadcasters are so afraid of FCC sanctions.

But if the commitment to children runs no deeper than that, both broadcasters and their critics agree, then the current wave of educational programming will ebb just as quickly once federal interest wanes. “You can put all the rules you want out there,” says Columbia’s Thurston, “but you won’t see a lot of change until and unless you get producers, advertisers and broadcasters who have a passionate feeling that something should be done.”

How long Congress and the FCC will remain focused on children’s TV programming is difficult to predict, but there are plenty of signs that activist sentiment is growing. FCC sources confirm that the agency is considering requiring stations to air a minimum of perhaps an hour a day of children’s educational shows (although not codified, the current presumed minimum is believed to be an hour a week). Some on Capitol Hill have threatened to impose “spectrum fees” for stations’ use of the airwaves if program performance doesn’t improve.

If enforcement of the Children’s Television Act doesn’t work, says acting FCC Chairman Quello, the next step would be “action on violence similar to (recent regulation of) indecency and obscenity. Part of this big movement among broadcasters in children’s TV is out of concern that there might be legislation to protect kids against the broadcast of senseless violence and brutality.”

Should that happen, warns KTTV’s Capra, the industry will be forced to fight back. “There’s a whole First Amendment question here about whether the government should be telling TV stations what to broadcast. My personal feeling, shared by many others in this business, is that they really shouldn’t be.”