Children's Television Act

The Children's Television Act is a rule that was enacted in 1990 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States, which was designed to increase the amount of educational children's programming on television. The Act requires full-service television stations that offer children's television programming to serve the educational and informational needs of children through their overall programming, including programs that are specifically designed to serve these needs (or "core" educational programming). In August 1996, the FCC adopted new rules to strengthen the enforcement of this statutory mandate. These new rules were:

A central goal of the rules in the FCC's revision to the Act is to provide parents and other members of the public with greater information about educational television programs, in order to help parents guide their children's television viewing and also encourage an ongoing dialogue between the public and television stations about the station's performance under the Children's Television Act. To help accomplish this, the 1996 revision to the rules implemented by the FCC require commercial television stations to identify core educational programs at the beginning of the program (such as with a verbal announcement or an icon), and to provide information identifying these programs to publishers of television program listings (either print or electronic).

The rules also require commercial full-service television stations to complete Children's Television Programming Report (Form 398) every quarter regarding their educational programming, and to make these reports available to the public via their studio facilities, public libraries, and/or the station's website.

Concern over the impact that television had on children began when television was still a new entertainment medium. During the 1950s, many individuals, particularly parents, asked their legislators to do something about the potential effects of television viewing on young people (such as their susceptibility to claims made in advertisements). There has been academic research that has been initiated since this time to monitor, analyze and explain the relationships between television and children, although the impact of television on academic performance continues to be debated in scholarly research.

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