Genachowski Speaks of Dangers Posed By Youths' Increased Screen Time

FCC chairman says proliferating media also has potential to educate, engage

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/20/2010 10:18:51 AM

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday (Jan. 20) talked about the dangers to youth of proliferating media and increased screen time in front of them, but he also said there was potential to educate and engage future world citizens in that media mix by combining regulation, technology, and new business models.

He also suggested that new media might be better suited to educating kids than a broadcast model based on aggregating eyeballs.

Genachowski was the opening speaker at a Kaiser Family Foundation event in Washington announcing the release of a third in a series of studies on media usage by young people.

The study found that usage had gone up dramatically among 8-18-year-olds, with TV still the dominant screen time.

The chairman, who worked to implement the Children's Television Act as a top FCC staffer in the 1990s, said the release of the study underscores the FCC's effort to update that act for the digital age--it launched an inquiry in October. "When I think about the challenges, I think about more screens, more time in front of screens, and more dangers from [both]."

He said "more and new" dangers included online predators, "effects on education that the report documents and effects on childhood obesity."

"We know why educational and informational programming on broadcast television has historically been a challenge," he said. "The business model lends itself to the opposite. If you have a business model that is premised on aggregating the largest possible audience, it doesn't make sense for folks in that business to wake up every day to say how exactly do we educate 5-8-year-olds."

He added that the country has decided they have to do that anyway, which is why there is a Children's Television Act. The act requires TV stations to air a minimum of three hours of educational programming a week and limits the commercials in that programming.

"But as we implement those, we have to understand that we are fighting against a business model that quite understandably wants to push broadcasters in a different direction, hence the tension, hence progress is slower than we would like."

Genachowski said an opportunity in fragmented media is a business model for targeted content. With the Internet and interactive cable, he said there should be an economic incentive for targeted educational programming.

"We all look at this explosion of communications of technology and media and see real opportunities in access to new information to help improve education and enable kids to engage even more with each other and, as they grow up an hit 18, [become] citizens of our country and the world."

He said the changes in technology and the media marketplace can "inform changes in policy going forward, so that we have, at the end, an ecosystem of policy, technology and economics that really serves kids and honors the First Amendment at the same time."

He also put in a plug for broadband everywhere, saying too many kids were being left behind and that they would need to be connected to be engaged citizens and economic participants.

Vicky Rideout, director of Kaiser's Program for the Study of Media and Health, said in rollout of the study that children spend more than 53 hours with media per week, which is more than church, school, and family. That, she said, justifies a hard look at how the messages of that media, including ads, affect kids.

Rideout mentioned the balance between creative freedom and wanting to protect kids from content that might be harmful.  She said the study was intended to help provide a base on which to build, both in terms of policy and public health public service messages. She also said it should give media company executives a chance to step back and look at the big picture.

That big picture, said researcher Don Roberts, a Stanford University professor, is that with miniaturized and mobilized media, kids are close to on-screen 24/7.

Rideout said expansion of home Internet, multitasking and an explosion of multimedia has led to the increase in usage. She also said parents don't tend to set limits on media.

The FCC is collecting industry comments for its wide-ranging inquiry into government and parents roles in managing media content for children in a world of multiplying digital platforms. The study will be part of that record.

Genachowski asked his audience to "pay great attention to this important report."