Should the Children's Television Act in the USA be repealed?
 

A while ago, I found this discussion:

https://www.awn.com/animationworld/d...-optimus-prime

Which is interesting, because of what many of us here grew up with. I have no problem with educational content, but I don't think forcing is OK.

So, do you think the Children's Television Act should be repealed?

Can you summarize this whole thing in a couple of sentences?

I don't care, screw the children.

Ban censorship. Nothing should be censored.

Cartoons are leagues better now than they were back then, so no. I'm not wild about the idea of toy companies having final say on things like scripts and making sure the cartoons service toy shilling over actual story like in those days. As formative as those cartoons may have been for us as kids, they're also kind of crap, largely due to how they were made and the agendas they were made to service.

As I understand it, that sort of thing is covered by the "Nick Jr." type fare like Dora and such, so it's not even an issue, and the restrictions on advertising are the important bits anyway.

Also, this part of the post comes off weird without further explanation, because it doesn't relate to anything in the article.

What.

If you read what he posted, you'd realize it isn't even remotely about censorship.

Cartoons were deregulated in the 80's when Reagan was President. A lot of cartoons made to sell toys came about due to that which, as far as being stories go, were often not very good, but are nostalgic brands for many of us. The Childrens Television Act came about, limiting advertising to kids and putting restrictions on them. Cartoons got better.

That's the article he posted in a nutshell. Whether you agree or not - I do - is up to you.

When animated Batman debuted in 1992, the law hadn't entered full force so the quality improvement would probably still happen.

Naming one good cartoon in a sea of bad doesn't really disprove the argument. It's influence was long, but if you have toy makers still tightly running the ships it doesn't much matter.

I watch some animated US-American action series from that time (those I couldn't catch as a child). At least they entertain me much more today's boring so called reality (fantasy?) TV.

"Better than reality TV" is not exactly a high bar to meet.