For months industry and children's advocacy groups have been commenting on a Joint Agreement that would bring new rules to children's TV programming in the digital era. The agreement was the result of years of negotiations between big media and a consortium of child advocacy groups, including Children Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Parent Teacher Association. On the other side of the table sat Turner Broadcasting, Time-Warner, Viacom, NBC, Discovery, CBS, and Disney.

Former FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani has played an active role in these negotiations for quite some time. On August 11th Tristani, now with the Benton Foundation, met with an FCC legal advisor and asked the Commission to ratify the document.

LLFCC asked Tristani what is at stake in these negotiations.

Tristani: What's at stake is how are we going to serve our children and our youth over the new digital channels and airwaves. One of the things that we have tried to do as members of the Children's Media Advocacy Coalition is to make sure that children's educational and informational needs are met by the new capacity of digital channels that has been gifted to these TV stations.

LLFCC: What's at the heart of this agreement?

Tristani: The heart of the agreement, at least from my vantage point, but I think that all children's advocates who participated in this would agree, is that for every additional digital stream that a TV broadcaster will be producing they will have to meet a minimal requirement of additional children's educational programming. Now broadcasters or TV stations, when they go to full digital, can broadcast instead of one channel, because that same channel that they had is now digital, they can go up to six. So for each additional channel or hours that they broadcast, they have to put in additional children's educational programming.

That's what was vital to this agreement.

LLFCC: Why did the advent of digital TV and advertising make it necessary to revisit this issue?

Tristani: We broadcast in a new world so to speak. In your traditional analog TV the typical ad is pretty straightforward, but with the new technologies, with the Internet, with interactive capabilities, and you see this already, in the program you may have a logo or a streaming read that says: "Visit this Web site."

The advertising is much more interactive. A child could be watching, watching one of his favorite shows. I'm thinking of Dora the Explorer. It's a very good educational program. But there could be an ad that says go to the Dora Web site, and that Web site could be very commercially driven. Or it could be very educational.

LLFCC: Some of the negotiations involve requirements related to the Web sites children can see on these channels?

Tristani: There are requirements related to Web sites or how Web sites are advertised during those same children's programs, because Congress made it very clear in the law that if you are programming for children at specific hours, that during those hours you have to be careful about what kind of advertising goes out to children. So there are limits on children's advertising. There are also limits on the kind of advertising tactics that can be used.

And this is because children, particularly young children, are more vulnerable to advertising. Under a certain age they can't even discern what advertising is.

LLFCC: Why is this taking place in the form of negotiations rather than just a straight proceeding?

Tristani: What happened is that back in 2004 - ”and we're talking almost three years ago in September - ”the FCC made a decision on very strong rules to protect children and also to offer them the benefits that we've just been talking about. However, some of the industry players were not content with these rules, and they threatened to sue. To make a long story short, industry sued; so did some of the children's advocates. So these new rules were stuck in the Federal courts.

Industry and children's advocates got together to see if there could be an agreement reached. One thing we know from court cases is that - ”we thought we had a very good case - ”but there's always the risk of losing. Also court cases can take a very long time. And these rules were just hanging there without being put in place.

So that's what drove the industry/children advocate talks. It's not typical. I participated actively in them. We had moments when I didn't think that we were going to reach agreement because everybody had something important at stake but at the end of the day I think we came out with a very good solid agreement that will put rules into place much quicker than a prolonged court proceeding.

LLFCC: So the point was to get something in cement now that everyone can live with rather than face a host of lawsuits that go on and on for years.

Tristani: Yes. Having said that I have to say the children advocates, we were very determined, even though we came from different places and had slightly different interests in some ways. We had certain very basic goals. And we were adamant that if those goals weren't met, we wouldn't settle.

LLFCC: Some industry filers on this matter say they still want more time. The Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy say they want more time. What do you say to that?

Tristani: This proceeding has been going on for almost six years. Or maybe seven. And I know that because I was on the FCC when this started. There has been plenty of time to vet and to hear. Some of the commenters who were parties to the agreement have been making the same argument for years. They're not new arguments. The FCC has a full and complete record and they can decide this, hopefully in late September.

LLFCC: September 26th is the next public FCC meeting. Are you optimistic that we will see it on the agenda?

Tristani: Well, I'm cautiously optimistic.