**Separate Statement of Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein**

> *Re: Children's Television Obligations of Digital Television
> Broadcasters, Report and Order, Docket No. 00-167*

Quality educational and informational television can enlighten our
children, feed their curiosity, and teach fundamental skills, ethics and
behaviors for our society. I thank the Chairman and my colleagues for
their commitment to this exceptionally valuable proceeding.

Today we've taken serious steps to update our rules and policies to
protect children. We provide certainty for broadcasters to know how
their obligation to serve the child audience translates in the digital
world. We offer parents more and better information to help their
children make appropriate viewing choices. And we recognize that new
technologies can lead to previously unimagined enriching educational
experiences, while we take care to prevent potential new harms.

Congress has affirmed the need for broadcasters to protect and serve
children. Broadcasters must provide programming specifically designed to
serve the particular needs of children, which is examined during license
renewals. Like other providers of programming aimed at young children,
they also must protect children from excessive commercialization. In
enacting the legislation, the House Report clearly states that the
presence of cable and VCRs "does not obviate the public interest
responsibility of individual broadcast licensees to serve the child
audience," and that "total reliance on marketplace forces is neither
sufficient nor justified to protect children from potential exploitation
by advertising or commercial practices."[^1]

These same principles must be reinforced not just in today's television
environment but for the onset of digital television and tomorrow's
launch into interactive television. In all its forms, television
continues to play an influential role in a child's life. Nearly all
children watch television before their first exposure to formal
education. Children watch on average three hours of television per day,
and more than half of all children have a television in their bedroom.
Without appropriate safeguards, we run the risk that our children become
captive to increasingly invasive advertising. Most broadcasters today
steadfastly serve their child audience. Our policies are designed to
ensure that all broadcasters will.

Digital television offers vast educational potential. It provides an
opportunity for broadcasters to nurture the emotional, cognitive,
behavioral and other needs of children through more and better
educational and informational programming. As broadcasters choose to
multicast, for example, their expanded capacity can be used
proportionately to further the needs of their young viewers. Indeed, we
give broadcasters the flexibility to outdo one another in how they bring
this programming to children using their multiple programming streams.

There is much more work to do to provide broadcasters and the public
with certainty regarding the entirety of their public interest
obligations in the digital era. I welcome what I expect will be an
equally constructive dialogue on resolving how the remaining public
interest obligations translate to digital. The high level of cooperation
in this proceeding bodes well for also achieving consensus on the
broader public interest examination in the weeks to come.

While this is merely the start, our children are our future and I'm
delighted we stepped up to protect them. Our children should be the ones
exploiting the potential of digital television, and not the other way
around.

[^1]: *Children's Television Act of 1990*, H.R. Rep. 101-385 at 6
    (1989).