A New Threat to Kids’ Shows in Digital TV?

New digital broadcast technology, which will let television stations air as many as five channels at once, should not be used to “ghettoize” children’s TV shows on Saturday mornings, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt told a meeting of educators and children’s advocates Monday.

Sounding a familiar theme in his tumultuous 3 1/2-year reign as FCC chairman, Hundt said the children’s TV market has great potential for spreading economic and social good--if only broadcasters would devote more resources to it.

Broadcasters would do well to strike “a balance between family values and market values,” said Hundt, who spoke at the second annual Conference on Children and Television in Washington.”This has always been the power of broadcast television--to effect social change.”

The comments by Hundt, who last month announced he was resigning as soon as a replacement is named, came nearly a year after the FCC voted to require television stations to broadcast three hours a week of educational programming aimed at children, beginning this fall. In exchange, the FCC, which reviews broadcast licenses every eight years, said it would expedite license renewals of complying broadcasters.

But Hundt said the advent of digital television, a breakthrough technology offering sharper pictures and clearer sound that is scheduled to be rolled out in the nation’s largest television markets beginning next year, will bring new challenges to enforcing those rules.

That’s because the technology will give broadcasters the ability to air a single channel of high quality, cinema-like video for the mass market, or up to five specialized channels of lower-quality video aimed at different viewing audiences.

Hundt and other children’s TV advocates say they fear many broadcasters might resort to the latter approach, and put all children’s programming on one channel, limiting the chance for such shows to enjoy success with the broader television-viewing audience.

“Many of us are already concerned that children’s TV is ghettoized as it is, because most of it is aired Saturday morning,” said Sandra L. Calvert, an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown University.

“Rather than have children’s shows compete against each other Saturday morning . . . it needs to be spread out so that children turning on the television any day of the week can see children’s shows,” said Calvert, who has done research on the impact of technology on children’s attention and social behavior.

While some cable networks targeting children--such as Nickelodeon--have done comparatively well in the ratings, executives of the three traditional networks have complained about a slump in the ratings for their children’s shows.

That may explain why the big television networks are planning to continue to confine children’s shows to Saturday. Only Fox, which has children’s programs every weekday afternoon, and Warner Bros. are targeting non-weekend hours.

Hundt said in his speech that the issue of how digital television broadcasters should handle children’s shows is likely to be addressed by a blue-ribbon panel being set up by the Clinton administration to examine the public-interest obligation of broadcasters in the coming digital TV age.

‘We need to make sure the right role for educational TV is described” by the panel, said Hundt. “We [don’t] need to strip educational TV from all of the popular channels and put it all on educational TV [channels] or PBS.”

The soon-to-be-announced presidential panel is expected to play a key role in developing public service rules that will be imposed by the FCC on digital TV broadcasters as they receive licenses for the technology, which promises to deliver ultra-sharp video images, compact-disc-quality sound and an array of new services beginning in December 1998. The FCC approved a digital TV licensing plan for the nation’s 1,600 TV broadcasters in April but delayed action on the public service rules.

But Hundt, the father of three children who range in age from 8 to 15, is likely to leave the agency before the digital TV panel’s work is completed.