Welcome to the Talk Policy Podcast. I'm Ashken Kazarian. Today we welcome Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Reilly, who recently has discussed the need to revisit the notorious

FCC kid vid requirement that requires broadcasters to hear at least three hours of educational

programming for kids per week. Commissioner, thank you for joining us. It's my pleasure. Thank you

for having me. So why did you get interested in this space? Why do you think we need to talk about it

more? So I think there's an obligation for the

commission to review all of its regulations that's on its books. In this space, we haven't looked

at our regulations since 2006. And so that's many years have changed. The marketplace has changed

tremendously since then. You see all the different programming that's available for video consumers,

and especially in the children's space. So I think it's high time that we review our rules to see

if they still match the burdens that we ask of broadcasters. Let's dive into the rules. So what kind

of rules do we have right now in the books? Well, in addition to three hours per per week on average,

you have an obligation as a broadcaster to do programming that's regularly scheduled,

that's 30 minutes in block, and that it air between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

So let's say it regularly means every Saturday from 10 a.m. till 1 p.m. There has to be Sesame Street on.

The programming that's scheduled for that slot has to be on. And if you disrupt that, you've got to go through a rigmarole and a bunch of hoops to reschedule it.

So one of the main burdens would be the preemption part of it. Do you mind

explaining to our listeners what it is because a lot of them are not policy wonks like us?

Sure. So if you're a local broadcaster and you have this obligation of three hours per week

and it's mostly on Saturday mornings and you have a live event such as the Olympics, you've got to figure out how to slice that into your current programming.

Well, if it disrupts your KidVid block, you've got obligations and burdens in terms of relocating that to some other time period.

And you're actually, we were talking to a broadcaster that had to plan six weeks in advance for preemption for an

event and that made the entire process incredibly complicated and at no point would the family

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