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Click for stories about important and interesting media people: Peggy Charren Peggy CharrenAfter watching television with her two young daughters, Peggy Charren decided something needed doing. "Children's television time was filled with cartoon adventures, often violent and rarely creative, in story or animation form," she said. "Youngsters were being told to want unhealthy food and expensive toys." Charren invited neighborhood moms to her livingroom to discuss the "wall-to-wall monster cartoons." Thus, in 1968, was born Action for Children's Television, which, with Charren in charge, became the most influential non-government entity shaping American television for the next two decades. The first target was Romper Room, a Boston-produced show that was little more than a program-length commercial aimed at kids. The host shamelessly hawked Romper Room's own line of toys from sign-on to sign-off. ACT sponsored a university study of Romper Room and was ready to take the findings to the Federal Communications Commission when station WHDH, which produced the show, stopped the "host-selling" to get Charren off its back -- ACT's first victory. Action for Children's Television then requested meetings with the three big networks, but ABC and NBC said no. Insulted, Charren and her growing organization decided to take their cause to the government. In 1970, ACT became the first public interest group to request a meeting with the FCC. The commission responded by creating a permanent group to oversee children's television issues. With the new government pressure, the National Association of Broadcasters, the major industry trade group, established new standards for children's television. The new guidelines barred "host-selling" and put a 12-minute per hour cap on commercials during children's television. The lesson for ACT was that government pressure works. "We found that when the regulators make noise the industry takes action to keep the rules away," Charren said. In 1971 ACT went to the Federal Trade Commission to complain about advertising. "One-third of the commercials were for vitamin pills, even though the bottles said, 'Keep out of reach of children' because an overdose could put them in a coma," said Charren. Before the FTC could act, the vitamin-makers withdrew the ads. Four years later, when Spiderman vitamins ads found their way onto kids shows, the Federal Trade Commission, primed by ACT, got rid of them. There were other battles, but the major victory for Charren and Action for Children's Television was the Children's Television Act of 1990. The law established government expectations for children's programming across a wide range of issues, including advertising, content and quantity. In 1992, to the surprise of many people, Charren announced she was disbanding ACT. After 24 years, she said, ACT has met the objectives that she had set out to accomplish, With the Children's Television Act in effect, the need for ACT had passed. At that point, ACT had 10,000 members. Through all her crusading for better children's programming, Charren never called for censorship. Her battle cry was choice. "Censorship meant fewer choices. We needed more choice, not less." She did, however, admit to pushing "to eliminate commercial abuses targeted to children." Even with violent programs, about which she had grave reservations, Charren never called for censorship. Her view: "Violent television teaches children that violence is the solution to problems, that violent behavior can be fun and funny, that criminals and police make up a larger percentage of the population than they really do, and that violent behavior is practiced by heroes as well as by villains. But you can't say that there shouldn't be any violence on television. It is the context that is really important. Too often, children are the excuse for banning speech: words and pictures in comic books, movies, classic stories, textbooks and television. But government censorship is not the way to protect children from inappropriate content." Marshall McLuhanCanadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan, who was born in 1911, taught at Assumption College in Windsor and later the University of Toronto. In 1954 he founded Explorations, a journal devoted to the analysis of popular media and culture. McLuhan devised the concept that "the medium is the message," which was one of his greatest contributions to our understanding of the mass media. McLuhan examined how people perceive media messages: not only looking at the content of the message but how the message is delivered but at its form. He used the metaphor of a light bulb to explain his idea: Everyone notices the content of the light bulb, the light it provides, which is the message. But nobody notices the form, that is the bulb itself. The same holds true for content in the context of the media. People notice the content of the media, like a speech on radio or a comedy on television, but they don't notice the medium that transmits the message.In short, McLuhan believed that the medium influences how we perceive the message. In other words, the medium is the message. McLuhan also developed the innovative hot-cool model to help explain the mass media. To McLuhan's thinking, books, magazines and newspapers are hot media because they require a high degree of thinking to use. To read a book, for example, you must immerse yourself to derive anything from it. The relationship between medium and user is intimate. The opposite is true with magazines and newspapers. McLuhan also considered movies a hot medium because they involve viewers so completely. Huge screens command the viewers' full attention, and sealed darkened viewing rooms shut out distractions. In contrast, McLuhan classified electronic media, especially television, as cool because they can be used with less intellectual involvement and hardly any effort. Although television has many of the sensory appeals of movies, including sight, motion and sound, it does not overwhelm viewers to the point that all else is pushed out of their immediate consciousness. When radio is heard merely as background noise, it does not require any listener involvement at all, and McLuhan would call it a cool medium. Radio is warmer, however, when it engages listeners' imaginations, as with radio drama. The same classification can be applied to children's programming. Some programming, due to fast-pace editing, can be seen as cool, while other more engaging fare is hot. For example, the "Power Rangers" is cool, while "Mr. Rogers" is hot. The heart of McLuhan's hot-cool model deals with how active or passive we are when we consume media messages. Generally speaking, for McLuhan, watching television is a passive process, not requiring much energy on the part of the viewer. Since television uses both audio and video channels to communicate its message, there is little for the viewer to do but be passive. The expression "couch potato" epitomizes how watching television is passive and therefore cool. In contrast, since reading a newspaper requires more input from the reader, it is an active process that makes newspapers a hot medium. McLuhan's point is underscored by research that has found people remember much more from reading a newspaper or magazine than from watching television or listening to the radio. The harder you work to receive a message from the media, the more you remember. There is as lot of debate about hot and cool media. How would you categorize the following, hot or cool?
© 1997, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706
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