The research/policy nexus: The Children's Television Act as a case in point

Abstract

In 1961, during his first speech to the broadcasting industry as newly appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC), Newton Minow uttered a phrase that would take on a life of its own and become a catchphrase for describing the television environment. Minow told the broadcasters that they had taken a precious resource, the scarce channel capacity allotted them, and turned it into a ‘‘vast wasteland’’ (Minow & LeMay, 1995). Forty-plus years have passed since Minow offered this characterization of television, and much has changed in the television environment: Television has since moved from a model in which most communities were served by a handful of broadcast stations to one where cable and satellite offer nearly unlimited programming options. Still, many believe that this expanded capacity has done little to enhance the quality of what television delivers, and especially so when considering television programming prepared for child audiences. Indeed, in 1995, Newton Minow looked back at the television environment, with a particular focus on children’s programming, and concluded that children had been abandoned in a wasteland of often violent and frequently senseless and inane programming (Minow & LeMay, 1995). Calvert and Kotler (2003) present us here with a remarkably ambitious and thoughtful study that examines the extent to which one of the few positive policy developments in the children’s television arena, the Children’s Television Act (CTA) of 1990, might have influenced the viewing and learning experiences of children. Using a very creative set of research methods, they point to what appear to be some successes emerging from the CTA. Other commentaries have focused more heavily on the study itself; this article is intended to offer an additional legal and policy context regarding the CTA itself, so as to provide an understanding of the potential utility of research studies such as this in the legal and policy arenas.