State Legislation on Children's Educational Programming
State legislation states that the Federal Communications Commission should enact rules that will require tv stations to air children's educational programming at least three hours a week. The FCC has offered a limited justification for the imposition of such legislation. However, the majority of the broadcasting stations had also broadcast at least 3 hours of instructional programming a week. FCC's, though, focuses on children's instructional content broadcasts on media competing with programs, including cable, radio, and video cassettes (Parker, 2003).
Freedom of Expression and Government Regulation
Freedom of expression is an important right that is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The nature of this right is inadequate. However, the government found it necessary for regulation for the further push of state interest. According to US Supreme Court, the government maintains an interest in the physical and psychological welfare of the children. With higher urgency and greater frequency, the parents, the physicians, the journalists, and the congressmen proposed that kids should be protected from increasing tide of violent and immoral explicit advertisements. With increasing competition in the media platform, with a common belief that such broadcasts attract larger audiences are part of a change in advertising programming. As much as legislators make greater efforts in protecting the children via their support of broadcast material standards, such moves consistently fail to overcome the concerns that this regulation impermissibly upon the media First Amendment rights.
Mandate of the FCC and its Limitations
The FCC is therefore mandated to regulate the broadcast industry in a way that is consistent with the interest of the public. Despite the broad congressional approach, FCC has historically limited its application; the agency is inadequate on both the scope of indecency's state meaning and the manner in which the prohibition was enacted. In expressing concern over the children's well-being, the agency started a two-stage expansion of its indecency system. The first one was the introduction of generic standards; FCC expanded its interpretation of the state prohibition against broadcast indecency. The generic type, unlike its predecessor, allows consideration of broadcast's context, rather than just identification of particular prescribed terms. Secondly, the agency intensified enforcement efforts (Zarkin, 2006).
Legal Case: Action for Children's Television v. FCC
In Action for Children's Television v. FCC (ACT 1), a huge coalition of broadcast interests sought review of the FCC's new restrictions on broadcast indecency before the Court of Appeal in the USA. According to 1st Amendment right regarding the law for passed broadcasts portrays a concern towards commercial advertisement that is aired to the general public. On another side, the most current case of Federal Communications Commission vs. Action for Children's Television, reveals amendments attributed to deficiency and is not a whole ban of immoral broadcasts. Also, it shows how the government or state does not have more additional limitations besides what has been passed by the federal law can be viewed as favoring the Cardigans. On reliance on studies done and present understanding about 1st law amendment, Cardigans will discover that the case about Action for Children's Television v. FCC will assist them to push for their advertisement aired out though with some time restrictions and guardian guidance. (Zarkin, 2006).
Conclusion
From the above analysis, I can argue that the Cardigans should be permitted to broadcast their commercial advertisement on WBLAH during the day without any limitations. WBLAH will, however, need to revise the old cases and focus on the new FCC laws to enable it to get the understanding of what they are allowed to do and what they cannot air. WBLAH can also look at Federal Communications Commission vs. Action for Children's Television. In case WBLAH broadcasted the commercial advertisement, then the Cardigans should not have any hindrance in airing their commercial advertisement on this network.
References
Parker, R. A. (2003). Free speech on trial: Communication perspectives on landmark Supreme Court decisions. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Zarkin, K. A., & Zarkin, M. J. (2006). The Federal communications commission: Front line in the culture and regulation wars. Westport (Conn.: Greenwood Press.
