ANA Intervenes in Suit Against FCC Revisions to Children's Ad Rules

On Friday, October 14, the ANA filed a Notice of Intention to Intervene with the District of Columbia Circuit’s U.S. Court of Appeals regarding Viacom, Inc.’s petition for judicial review of the FCC’s revisions to its Children’s Television Act rules.

Currently, the FCC rules limit advertising during children’s programming to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays. Promotional materials, public service announcements, and educational messages are exempt from these time limits. The proposed revisions would remove most of the exemptions except for educational and informational (E/I) programming. Also, the FCC’s revised rules would impose strict requirements on the broadcast of commercial website addresses during programming. These regulation changes are set to take effect on January 1, 2006.

The ANA believes that the FCC’s rule changes would drastically affect both the First Amendment and economic interests of ANA’s members, which in turn threatens the continued viability of children’s programming. Further, the FCC’s new rules, which expand the definition of “commercial matter” to include promotional materials in the time limits, would dramatically shrink the time available for commercial advertising during children’s programming.

The FCC’s move threatens to undermine the foundations of advertiser-supported children’s programming. Due to the hard time limit cap on children’s advertising on television, clearly these regulations will either drive out a substantial portion of ads presently in the children’s area or drastically increase their cost.

The new restrictions regarding broadcasting website addresses during children’s programming and ads also raise serious First Amendment concerns. The FCC is attempting, through the back door of regulation of children’s advertising, to impose broad and sweeping regulation of Internet sites.

These proposed regulations are content-based and therefore face the highest level of First Amendment scrutiny. We feel the courts are highly likely to find these proposals unconstitutional.