The Federal Communications Commission has cited two television stations for airing "program length commercials" aimed at children, a violation of the Children's Television Act (CTA).

TV stations KMAX of Sacramento, California and WYCW of Ashville, North Carolina received the letters of admonishment on April 4th. Their respective owners, Sacramento Television Stations and Media General, have applied for FCC license renewals.

In its renewal application, Media General admitted that WYCW broke CTA rules, most notably the FCC's ban on displaying the characters from a children's show in a commercial aired before or after the program.

In December of 2006, WYCW ran a CW Network advertisement for Post Cereal’s Cocoa Pebbles during an episode of Xiaolin Showdown. The commercial displayed images from Post Cereal's postopia.com Web site, which included small images of characters from Xiaolin Showdown.

This turned the Xiaolin show into a "program length commercial," in FCC parlance. CTA rules discourage such advertising, because children cannot tell the difference between commercial matter and programming matter, and can be easily induced to want products that a children's show character appears to endorse.

In order to avoid the program length commercial classification, a broadcaster must separate commercials somehow connected to the children's program "by intervening and unrelated program material."

The FCC rejected Media General's argument that WYCW had nothing to do with the selection of advertisement.

"The Commission has consistently held that a licensee’s reliance on a program’s source or producer for compliance with our children’s television rules and policies will not excuse or mitigate violations which do occur," the FCC's letter concluded.

KMAX's license renewal application also acknowledged a commercial that ran afoul of the rule—an ad for the "Voltron" action figure broadcast during the Voltron: Defender of the Universe program.

The Commission found both violations to be isolated instances, meriting no stronger sanctions.

In September of 2006, the FCC updated its children's television rules, adapting them to the digital TV environment.