Organization Criticizes Quality Levels of U.S. Educational TV

WASHINGTON, D.C., November
13: Children Now, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization, has
released a report on "substantial deficiencies" in kids' educational
TV on the broadcast networks in the U.S., calling into question
"broadcasters' commitments to the nation's children."

Educationally/Insufficient?
An Analysis of the Educational Quality & Availability of Children's E/I
Programming explored the quality
of programs that broadcast stations label as educational/informational (E/I)
compliant. The organization believes that just 13 percent of those shows were
"highly educational, while 23 percent were classified as "minimally
educational." The majority—63 percent— were judged to be
"moderately educational."

The evaluation was led by
researchers Dr. Barbara J. Wilson, Dr. Dale Kunkel and Kristin L. Drogos, who
analyzed a total of 120 episodes across 40 shows, evaluating each on a range of
educational criteria that are associated with children's learning from
television.

"When only one in
eight E/I episodes is highly educational and nearly twice as many are deficient
in educational merits; when few broadcasters offer more than the bare minimum
of programming and confine their entire E/I schedule to one or two days of the
week; when more than one-quarter of E/I shows model harmful violent or socially
aggressive behavior; and when the vast majority of programs contain no basic
academic or health-related lesson, it is difficult to see how broadcasters'
efforts are sufficiently serving the educational needs of the nation's
children," the report states.

Christy Glaubke, the
director of Children Now's Children & The Media program, accuses broadcasters
of short-changing children. "This is clearly a missed opportunity to help
support the educational development of the nation's children."

U.S. networks are required
by law to air E/I kids' programming for at least three hours per week. Children
Now reports that 59 percent of stations air the minimum required amount, while
3 percent offer more than four hours per week. In addition, 75 percent of
stations schedule E/I programming exclusively on weekends.

"Our study indicates
that children's educational programming on commercial television is
disappointing from a quantity and a quality perspective," said Dr. Barbara
Wilson, the senior author of the research.

Previous studies in the
1990s found that between 20 percent and 33 percent of E/I programs were rated
as "highly educational."

Not all broadcasters
received a poor grade by Children Now: the educational programming delivered by
PBS was rated significantly higher (with an average quality rating of 9.1 on a
12-point scale) than E/I shows on commercial stations (a 7.9 average rating).
Plus, PBS programs were lauded for emphasizing cognitive-intellectual lessons
in their educational fare (55 percent of programs), whereas commercial channels
relied largely on social-emotional lessons (67 percent of programs).

—By Mansha Daswani