Markey Threatens Limit on Kids Food Ads

By Ira Teinowitz

The chairman of a House telecom panel is unleashing a big new stick in the children's obesity wars. If food marketers don't quickly restrict ads targeting kids to healthier products, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said he will ask the FCC to craft a rule to limit the foods that can be advertised on children’s shows.

“The First Amendment is precious, but the children of our country are just as precious. We need a healthier balance. We need to make sure these children are not bombarded with messages from commercial America,” the Massachusetts Democrat told a hearing of his panel of the House Energy & Commerce Committee today.

Saying the FCC has a duty to see that children’s programming “is nutritious intellectually and in their diet,” he said he will press the agency to act if food and fast-food marketers and media companies don’t.

“If there is not a proper response from the industry, I am prepared to press the Federal Communications Commission to put on the books a rule to protect the children of the country from these unhealthy messages,” Rep. Markey added. “The FCC has the authority under the Children’s Television Act to do that. I just hope that the industry responds.”

The congressman declined to say how long he’d wait before making such a request.

“As we say in Boston, I won’t fire till I see the whites of their eyes, or at least the whites of their paper” proposing changes, he said.

Kids food ads have attracting more attention in Washington, with TV ads for “junk foods” cited by critics as one cause of rising childhood obesity, a charge food and advertising groups deny. Rep. Markey earlier this week wrote five food and beverage companies urging them to follow the lead of Kellogg Co. in limiting their kids advertising to healthier products.

Food companies are preparing pledges of changes they will make in their kids advertising as part of a Council of Better Business Bureaus initiative.

The committee heard a note of warning from Jon Rand, general manager of three Washington state Fox stations—KAYU-TV in Spokane, KCYU in Yakima and KFFX-TV in Pasco—about trying to limit food ads on kids TV. He said advertising on his stations’ kids shows has been drastically slipping, and further limits could impact his ability to air quality shows.

The food issue was part of a broad list of concerns the committee examined today in a hearing about the imagery kids see. Besides advertising, the panel examined the impact of tobacco smoking, and excessive violence in programming.

As part of the violence discussion, there were calls for a la carte cable and warnings about government regulation.

“A la carte has the honor of being one of the truly awful policy ideas floating around Washington,” said Kyle McSlarrow, president-CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

(Editor: Horowitz)