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Compromise Reached In FCC Rules On Kids' Ads

  • Ad Age, Friday, December 16, 2005 12:34 PM
A compromise has been reached in the battle over advertising to children that had pitted marketers who target kids and the media companies who run their ads on one side against advocacy groups and the federal government on the other. The fight was over new Federal Communications Commission curbs designed to limit the impact of advertising on kids' TV shows and the Internet. The original FCC proposal would have forced broadcasters to start counting program promotions in shows aimed at children under 13 against commercial limits of 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends, essentially reducing ad time. In addition, media companies would have been banned from showing Web addresses linking to pages in which program characters sold products. Finally, the rule would have limited broadcasters' ability to preempt children's programming. Under the compromise agreement, broadcasters can run program promotions in kids' shows without counting them against commercial time, but only if the promotions are for other kids' shows. In another change, the ban against host characters selling products on Web sites is far less stringent.

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