[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 46 (Friday, March 29, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3208-H3209]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE CHILDREN'S TELEVISION ACT RULEMAKING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, in 1990 we passed in this body the 
Children's Television Act. In that act we set as a requirement that the 
Federal Communications Commission had to go into a rulemaking on the 
question of what the responsibilities of local broadcasters would be to 
have served the educational and informational needs of the children who 
live within the broadcast area of every television station in the 
United States. During the Bush years there was no real activity on this 
rulemaking that had to be undertaken, and there was a delay of almost a 
year before Reed Hunt was in fact confirmed as the new Chairman of the 
FCC in 1993.
  The FCC is in a rulemaking right now on this issue, and it is I think 
about as important a debate as we can have in this country because, 
while the V-chip which we passed on the floor and is now law, as signed 
by President Clinton, gives to the parents of the country the ability 
to block out excessively violent, sexually material on their screen, 
and that will be a technology available to parents within the next 
couple of years, it still does not in any way ensure that there will be 
quality positive children's television that will enhance the 
educational and informational needs of children across the country. 
That is what the Children's Television Act rulemaking at the Federal 
Communications Commission is all about.
  It is my belief that the Commission has to take a very strong stand 
on this issue. We know that children watch, on average, 4 to 7 hours of 
television every day. Now, would that it was not so, but we have moved 
from the 1950's in the era of ``Leave It To Beaver'' to the 1990's in 
the era of ``Beavis and Butthead.''
  Increasingly, the broadcast stations in our country have reduced 
dramatically the amount of children's television of educational content 
that they put on the air, and instead, substituted the Flintstones or 
the Jetsons, and argued that in fact those are programs of educational 
quality because the Flintstones teach children about the archaeological 
age and the Jetsons will teach children about the future. But parents 
know that they really do not serve any educationally nutritious role in 
the development of young people's minds.
  So this debate at the FCC is quite important. I am of the opinion 
that the FCC has to put on the books a requirement that a minimum of 3 
hours per

[[Page H3209]]

week, even that is embarrassingly low, but 3 hours per week be the 
standard, and that every broadcaster have to meet that minimal 
standard.
  Now, we know that the good broadcasters are going to do that anyway, 
and they will far exceed the 3-hour minimum. But we will capture those 
broadcasters who think of their broadcast license as nothing more than 
an opportunity to print money, just take in the advertising dollars and 
to use it for whatever purposes they want, excluding children as a 
constituency. So this is very important, and it is my hope that all 
Members who are concerned about this issue will in fact join in the 
effort to advance this children's television agenda at the Federal 
Communications Commission.
  In addition, and I want all Members to be aware of this, as part of 
the communications bill we also ensure that each one of the 51 public 
utility commissions in the United States has to go into a rulemaking to 
ensure that every school in the United States has access to advanced 
digital technologies.

                              {time}  1415

  Now why is that important? Very simply, because as we pass GATT and 
NAFTA here on the floor of Congress, we are basically constructing a 
new compact with the people in our country. One, we are letting the 
low-end jobs go, and increasingly that is the case across this country. 
But secondly, we are also saying that we are going to try to tie it to 
high-end jobs, the high-technology jobs of the future so that they will 
be based here in the United States. Well, what kind of competitive 
people will we have if we have not thought through a strategy to ensure 
that every child in the country, not just the children of the upper and 
the upper-middle class in our country, but every child, including those 
in the bottom 40 percentile, have access to the skills they are going 
to need, have the skill sets that they are going to need in order to 
compete for these higher-end jobs?
  That is why we have to give parents the weapon of blocking out the 
excessive violence and sexual material. That is why we have to have 
more positive children's programming on commercial stations. That is 
why we have to ensure that the public broadcasting budget is kept high 
so that the quality programming of Sesame Street to Barney, right 
through the day remains on the air, and that is why we have to ensure 
that every child has access to these computer technologies in every 
classroom from K through 12 from the day they begin school.

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