Comm prof patrols TV for children

Amy Jordan researches kids' TV programs, coding shows for violence, sex and morals. Amy Jordan will be the first person to admit that she watches too much TV. She has to. As part of her research on children's television, Jordan, a Communications professor, spends about 1 1/2 hours each day scrutinizing programs ranging from Superman to Sesame Street. "I've seen them all," she said, lamenting that there are about 300 children's TV programs currently on the air. Jordan -- an alumna and researcher at the Annenberg School for Communication -- and her student-based staff code each program for content, looking at a show's violence and sexism, as well as its moral and educational lessons. "Coders" watch the programs on television sets mounted next to computer terminals, so they can record certain features of shows like the number of violent scenes or positive lessons per episode. Most coders can bear about 1 1/2 hours of children's TV per day, according to Jordan. After that, they're pretty much smurfed out. But two years ago, when the project was in a "crunch period," College senior and coder Karima Zedan endured between six and seven hours a day of juvenile programming. "You never want to watch another cartoon for as long as you live," she said. Zedan was paid $7 an hour for her labors -- which essentially consisted of watching TV. Jordan began the coding projects in 1995, when she returned to Annenberg as a teacher. "I knew how much crap there was out there [on television]," said Jordan, a mother of three. "I was surprised that there was so much educational programming out there that no one knew about." "[Educational programs] were kind of buried in the schedule," she added, noting that most high-quality, educational shows were being aired at around 5:30 a.m. Jordan points to several factors which account for the lack of quality programming for kids. First, she explained that advertising agencies play a big role in determining which programs find their way onto the airwaves. The problems begin when advertisers gear programs toward their target audience of children between the ages of two and 11. "[The advertisers] want to go in there and sweep up as many eyeballs as they can," Jordan said, but educational programmers must be more age-specific to get their messages across. Another problem for children's TV is a lack of press coverage. The print media often ignore children's programming, denying it the same coverage as adult TV. In researching the issue, Jordan brought together reporters and network representatives, and she found that TV critics weren't receiving the same promotional materials for children's programming as they were for adult TV shows. Jordan is trying to resolve such conflicts --Ewhich often result in poor programming for kids -- by fostering dialogue between different players in the industry. "I really thought that I wanted to be in the media industry rather than analyze it," said Jordan, who held internships in broadcast and print media during her years at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. "It just wasn't my cup of tea." At home, Jordan limits her 9-year-old son to 1 1/2 hours of TV per day and encourages him to spend it watching PBS, rather than cartoons like the X-Men. But Jordan's young son is not always willing to accept such an arrangement --Eat least not without a fight. "'All my friends can watch it, why can't I?' he says," Jordan said, recounting her son's chief argument.