TV Executives Hear Views of Youths

From a lumpy beanbag set up on center stage, 16-year-old Fairai Richmond put his finger on what he thinks is wrong with children’s television shows.

“You ever notice that all the high schools on TV always look the same?” said Fairai, speaking to a crowd of TV executives and others at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood on Tuesday.

“You know, not like my high school but some fantasy high school,” said Fairai, who attends Palisades Charter High School in Pacific Palisades. “What kids’ shows need is more reality, you know, they should be more like real life.”

Fairai’s input was exactly what TV industry leaders, including Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard and entertainer Bill Cosby, had gathered to hear. Fairai and a dozen other children talked about which shows they liked and didn’t like, which ones felt real and which ones felt fake, and how TV affects their lives.

The point of the one-day conference, called “Through the Eyes of Children,” was to discuss ways to improve children’s programming, especially in terms of making youngsters’ TV more diverse. And although a lot of the talk was funny and light, the tone became a little heavier, even from comic Cosby, when the subject of racial stereotyping came up.

Children’s shows have a great responsibility to be fair about racial and cultural differences, Cosby said.

Especially alarming, industry leaders concluded, is the lack of Latino programming. One percent of the roles on TV are Latino characters, and now there are no English language shows targeted at Latino children.

“I think that’s a real problem in this country,” said FCC chief Kennard. “More representative TV will help build stronger communities. We need leadership in this area from the industry.”