Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 28, 1992 TAG: 9201280080
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHANIE SCHOROW ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, MASS. LENGTH: Medium
TV CRUSADER SAYS SHE WON'T FADE
She's battled television networks, the Reagan White House and the Teen-age Mutant Ninja Turtles.Peggy Charren, an advocate for better children's television for more than two decades, regrets only that she never made President Nixon's enemies list.
Since 1968, Charren's group, Action for Children's Television, has buzzed federal agencies, TV executives and politicians to improve children's programming and limit advertising directed at kids.
Earlier this month, however, she announced that the Cambridge-based ACT would disband at the end of the year - not because children's television is better, but because federal regulations long sought by ACT now are in place.
"It seems crazy to stay in business to be a sound bite," said Charren, who as ACT president led the way for the 1990 Children's Television Act.
ACT's assets, about $125,000, will be donated to the Harvard University Graduate School of Education for an annual fellowship and a lecture series on children's TV, and Charren said she expects local groups to carry on ACT's agenda.
"Eventually, we would fizzle out to nothing," she said. "This way, with this big amount of money, we leave a legacy."
Although Charren remains disgusted with much of children's TV, she doesn't consider the medium the menace. She loves television.
"A lot of people look down on TV. I think it's as good - or can be as good - as any other medium," said Charren, a quick-talking, diminutive 63-year-old. "TV should be like a good library. You can find all kinds of junky books in the library. I love cartoons. In fact, I like `The Simpsons.' The attitude of the program toward censorship was perfect."
ACT had opposed a proposed ban by the Federal Communications Commission on "indecent" broadcasts.
"From the beginning, ACT said censorship was worse than junk on television," Charren said. "We're not trying to get anything off the air. You can turn it off. But you can't turn on what's missing."
What's there that she doesn't like are cartoon characters with heavy merchandising campaigns behind them, characters with an emphasis on violence, like "G.I. Joe" and "Teen-age Mutant Ninja Turtles," or "mindlessly cute" characters like "The Care Bears" and "My Little Pony."
ACT was formed in Charren's suburban Boston home with two other women, also mothers, who were appalled by what television offered young viewers.
Not knowing enough to be intimidated, the women called the chairman of the FCC for an appointment, and delivered a simple message: "Children are people, too," and children's television should be subject to federal rules mandating the airwaves serve the public.
ACT's first crusade was against kid-directed ads for children's vitamins, which can be dangerous in large doses.
With a $165,000 grant from the John Markle Foundation in 1970 and subsequent grants from the Ford and Carnegie Foundations, ACT also pushed for FCC rules regulating cartoon shows based on toys or advertising. The group also gave out annual awards for good children's TV programs.
Throughout the years, Charren rejected calls for boycotts by ultraconservative groups and the Moral Majority and "those people who think sex and violence is one word."
If such groups were more active today, she said, she would not have disbanded ACT.
Charren, who plans to remain a children's TV advocate and "lick stamps" for the Democrats, is the kind of staunch liberal who was thrilled to be linked in a recent New York Times editorial to Planned Parenthood official Faye Wattleton and her fight for abortion rights.
And she gained at least one other measure of fame.
When "The Simpsons" aired a show last year in which cartoon mother Marge Simpson led a crusade to clean up kids' cartoons, Charren said, "It was on about 10 minutes and my daughter called to say, `Mom, I think you are on `The Simpsons.' "