Say goodbye to kids programming?

[JediTricks]

Just caught this on IMDB:

Amid efforts to restrict certain food advertising on children's television shows, the head of the Association of National Advertisers on Tuesday warned that such efforts "would curtail if not end children's broadcasting on free television and ad-supported cable." As reported in MediaPost's online edition on Wednesday, ANA President and CEO Bob Liodice told a Senate panel that the advertising industry's "self-regulatory system is an active cop on the beat ... working to see that all marketing aimed at children is appropriate." Lawmakers are coming under heavy pressure from some children's advocates who charge that kids are bombarded with ads for high-calorie cereals, drinks and assorted junk food on network and cable programs aimed at them. A New York University study recently concluded that $13 billion is spent annually by the food and drink industries on ads featured in kids shows.

I find this shocking that there is so much advertising money spent trying to get kids to buy junk food, but having watched cartoons lately, I am not surprised at all. However, I would be quite stunned if there were no more kids programming at all (though that'd probably be better for them anyway), my thinking is that the toy industry would simply step up their advertising or the costs of making kids shows would diminish to catch up to the lack of junk food advert dollars.

[B'Omarr Monkey]

Clearly you've forgotten the 1980s where pretty much every Saturday morning cartoon was little more than a half hour commercial for a toy line: Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, etc. The blatantness of this was frowned upon so heavily that the practice was squashed.

[Kidhuman]

Holy crap. DOes that mean Cartoon Network will be gone? Nick? That is a huge step.

[JediTricks]

KH, I think it means they'll be hampered, possibly to the point of adding paid programming during the day. Nighttime advertising for both of them seem to be more adult-oriented anyway, so I'm betting they'll survive on that, and they both have a massive library of already-paid-for shows which is now almost pure profit any time they can get someone to advertise on it at almost any price.


B'Omarr, I think you have that backwards. In the early '80s, the FCC made it legal for cartoons to be themed around a product line and ever since that's the way it's been, from the original He-Man, GI Joe, and Transformers cartoons to today's shows like Transformers: Energon and Pokemon, that ruling has continued to make this practice possible. Hasbro's been at the forefront of this since the beginning, although supposedly Mattel has made more off of He-Man cartoons, and at one point in the early '90s - just after Hasbro bought Kenner - they had an entire 2 hour syndicated block of programming dedicated to several of their toy lines.

[plasticfetish]

Who are these "children's advocates" anyway?

OK. This whole thing's just gotten to be too totally insane. I don't care how much money "they" spend advertising candy, sugared cereal or fast food... until my kid's old enough to drive himself down the street to spend his own money on the junk, I'm not gonna worry about it. By that time, we'll be out of gasoline and he'll be so fit from walking everywhere, that it wont matter anyway. These kids with diet problems, (and in this case their biggest problem is that their parents don't know how to feed them properly) are gonna eat poorly no matter what's being shown between episodes of "Ed, Edd and Eddie" and "Duck Dodgers."

Grrrrrrr!!!

Yeah fine, no more commercials for mac-and-cheese... great, but please go ahead and show some more of those creepy anti-drug spots that freak my kid out during Saturday morning cartoon time.

Oh, wait! Look, a little digging and I've found out who's behind this...

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200311101.html

Food marketing aimed at kids undermines parental authority and helps fuel the epidemic of childhood obesity, according to a report issued today by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

What? Undermines parental authority? What kind of parent has so little authority that the Trix Rabbit is capable of ruining their kid's life?!?

"Parents are fighting a losing battle against food manufacturers and fast-food restaurants, which use aggressive and sophisticated techniques to get into children's heads and prompt them to pester their parents to purchase the company's products," said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at CSPI and the report's author. "SpongeBob Squarepants, Winnie the Pooh, Elmo, and even sports stars like Jason Giambi are enlisted to push low-nutrition foods on kids."

Seriously... at some point my kid needs to learn how to distinguish between what's real and what's advertising BS. No matter how well these people filter the airwaves to prevent my child from being brainwashed by "aggressive and sophisticated techniques," he's still gonna need to learn right from wrong on his own. As far as "pestering" goes... there's a simple word that ends it, "NO."

It's all so Orwellian. Thanks JT, for the nightmares I'll be having tonight.

[mabudonicus]

Yeah, what he said...
The whole idea that there is altruism at any level of the situation is kinda weird...
That "trix rabbit" crack was genuine spit-take material PF
While trying to protect people, this policy sounds really insidious...
If you look at it in a purely profit-based sense, though, it sounds like a way to both make television distribution more restricted and no doubt more expensive to the consumer.... I saw a ComCast apologist on TV the other night saying that if the disney merger thing happened, vertical integration would make it more efficient, yet consumer prices may still go up IF the consumers wanted to continue to watch great programming, which this guy was implying is the bulk of the price of cable service....

Sounds like air broadcast will be impossible, cost-wise after this, and seein as how people spend outrageous prices for so many other things associated with raising kids, maybe the industry sees this as a way to tap right into that market... you won't mind your cable bill going up, it's for the children, just like halliburton (permission to get rid of whatever offends)

[B'Omarr Monkey]

My feeling is these decisions are made by people who don't have kids, haven't had kids in a long time, or feel guilty because they are sitting their kids down in front of the tv all day insteqad of interacting with them.

I watched my fair share of tv as a kid and didn't feel compelled to buy every box of cereal I saw, or every toy they showed. The only toys I got excited by in commercials were the same ones that would have appealed to me anyway if I saw them in a store.

This is like the group of people who decide who decide that scenes in movies need to be trimmed so that they don't offend or disturb viewing audiences. Clearly, this group that makes these decisions is capable of watching those scenes deemed too graphic for the rest of us, without becoming unhinged themselves.

You are probably right about that JediTricks, but I know that decisions were made (as for whether legislation was passed, that's another thing) that the situation was getting way out of hand as to the amount of tv shows being made to simply to sell a toy line instead of the other way around. This is why most of those shows went away (at least for a while) and we were able to get series like BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. I think things started cycling back with POKEMON, which is also why Saturday morning is filled with so many bargain basement anime shows as well.

[Mandalorian Candidat]

I watched my fair share of tv as a kid and didn't feel compelled to buy every box of cereal I saw, or every toy they showed. The only toys I got excited by in commercials were the same ones that would have appealed to me anyway if I saw them in a store.

Ditto.

What, do they think kids are so mindless that they'll be compelled to bug mommy and daddy endlessly for Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Sounds like another substitute for parenting to me.

No thanks, I'll be the dad, not the TV.

[Kidhuman]

All a kid has to do is watch 1 hour of TV a day. My kids are limited in the Tv they watch during the day. The watch a little when they wake up, play most of the day and do schoolwork. At night usually after dinner is their quiet time, where they sit and watch TV. My son comes running in the room becuase Sunny D says you can win Hulk stuff or Campbells soup is giving away a mansion for a week.

I dont mind the soup but every other food item aimed at kids(Trix rabit, and all) is ridiculous. I dont buy them everything they wqant, but iit does get annoying hearing about it all the time. Walking through the food jobber and hearing this repeatedly is annoying. Most parents will buy the stuff just to shut the kid up, but not me.

I think cereal is way overpriced. A box of Cocoa Pebbles is as much as a huge bag of Malt-O-Meal cereal and its the same damn thing. Maybe, just maybe, if they didnt spend so much money advertising and giving junk away, we could have some decent prices. It is the whirlwind effect.

End babbling rant.

[Darth Jax]

darn, i must be more suggestible than even the smallest kid because i rush right out and get everything i see advertised on tv. i have closets full of chia pets and products to cover my bald spot. you should see my bathrooms, how they sparkle with all the orange goo i've gotten. my cd player is always stocked full of "singers and songwriters" from the 70's.

is there still a ruling that channels have to air a certain amount of 'educational programming' each week? i remember that being the reason for such things as carmen sandiego and bill nye the science guy getting airtime on saturday mornings