FCC fends off “fleeting Pokemon” waffle attack

Congress put these rules into the CTA, enacted in 1990, because until children get to around the age of seven or eight, they don't have the cognitive ability to know that they are even watching commercials. Kids accept the claims of the ads, many for sugary foods and snacks, as statements of fact. They especially accept them if their favorite animated character endorses the product (or even morphs into the product, as in this case).

And, of course, kids watch tons of TV. An FCC report disclosed last year that most children in the United States have watched  the equivalent of three school years of television by the time they enter the first grade. This trend, "combined with the prevalence of unhealthy foods and a more sedentary lifestyle have created a perfect storm that has made childhood obesity a nationwide problem," concluded FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate at a conference on children's' television held in the summer of 2006.

Tate spoke while the Commission was tackling the tricky task of extending these rules from analog to digital TV, where kids programs will increasingly refer and even link to commercial Web sites. In 2004 the Commission proposed a set of revised regulations for children's digital TV. But industry reps said they were too prohibitive and public interest groups called them too weak. Fearing a lengthy lawsuit, the FCC dropped their proposed guidelines and let a consortium of players that included the American Academy of Pediatricians and Viacom bargain with each other.

Finally in September of 2006 the two groups came up with a complex set of new guidelines that the FCC approved. Among other requirements, digital children's TV shows may not display links to Web sites unless the site offers "a substantial amount of bona fide program-related or other noncommercial content" and is "not primarily intended for commercial purposes." In addition, a program related character can appear on the displayed Web site only in sections that are "sufficiently separated" from site product advertisements. And digital stations that split their signal into multi channels have to offer a larger array of children's shows, "roughly proportional" to those offered on their primary signal.

These new rules, however, aren't as precise as the analog TV regs. They also have yet to be extensively applied, so get ready for plenty more fleeting Pokemons and other digital miracles to show up on the FCC's penalty docket in the near and distant future. Maybe some court cases too.